updates-midnight

[severe birch]

Welcome to the Updates Channel! This will be one of several new channels and features within the Discord, which aren't all quite ready yet, being opened up in the interest of organizing information and creating more visible information.

Follow this channel for updates on important Warrior changes, hotfixes, blue posts, editorials, resource updates, and other information specific to Dragonflight Season 4, while The War Within information should be directed to that category instead. Most short-term information that previously would normally be pinned will now be found here, though pins will also remain in use for the time being.

‎ ‎
__ Spending Bullion__ - You should spend your first bullion on the Scale of Awakening Legendary upgrade, however it is currently bugged and not able to be upgraded with Crests beyond its initial 502 upgrade level. This will probably be fixed soon, but you may want to hold off on making the purchase ASAP.

• If you don't have Fyr'alath or another Myth track weapon yet, Ashkandur is a strong option, but not an efficient one since there is dramatically reduced competition for 2h weapons this season.
• Buying the Eranog ring and looting a weapon elsewhere is generally a more efficient use of your bullion, since its effect has about the same power as Ashkandur's. If you already have the ring, you can think about trinkets instead.
• If you don't think you'll be able to get a Myth track weapon or intended to play Fury, and aren't concerned with delaying your other purchases, Ashkandur may still be a good option - just know that it will be "wasted" once Fry'alath or another Myth weapon finally drops.
• You can also sim before buying using Gear Compare.

The Bullion vendor is in The Parting Glass in east Valdrakken.

[severe birch]

‎ ‎
Great Vault Sockets are half off this season, so if your vault sucks, it might be a good early pick to make up for what you lose from ring/bracer/etc. Note that Top Gear results do not yet suggest double sockets though, so make sure to think about the value of two sockets instead of one when running your sims! (That bis trinket though!)

[severe birch]

‎ ‎
Fyr'alath is now able to be upgraded with Flightstones and Crests, however the Crest/Flightstone discounts for already having a higher item level weapon are not being applied. This has since been fixed, and upgrading discounts are being properly applied.

[severe birch]

Arms APL Updates Now Live
With the help of @edgy phoenix, the multitarget rotation has been simplified; losing ~1% in AoE while gaining ~4% priority target damage.

• Thunderous Roar no longer has any conditionals - just use it on cooldown after applying Rend, which should naturally align within a couple GCDs of Warbreaker anyway.
• Keep Whirlwind (Storm of Swords) on cooldown, prioritized just after Warbreaker, and ahead of Bladestorm.
• Only use Cleave with 2 stacks of Martial Prowess (and only >4 targets if during Sweeping Strikes), prioritized just after the afformentioned Whirlwind.
• Other minor changes which don't affect the main rotation include a fix for Cleaveless builds not using Mortal Strike at high target counts and better 2+2p support.

With the help of @little ice, Crushing Force builds have also been improved slightly; gaining ~0.2% in single target.

• Slam can once again be prioritized ahead of Thunder Clap to fill the rotation, whenever Rend has >12s duration (just to ensure it doesn't fall off at a bad time when going into cooldowns).
• This makes CF builds insignificantly stronger again, but not by enough to be worth the extra talent points.

[severe birch]

Season 4 Fury Buffs

• Not as big as it sounds, since there are so many forms of external damage in Season 4.
• Both changes to the scaling aura and S4 tier set together come out to ~3.8% increase, or +15k DPS in single target to the BiS profile; a very slightly higher percentage for players who haven't collected all the toys yet.
• Arms is still ~6% ahead @ 405 vs 430k.

[severe birch]

Extra Bullion Today
Completing the weekly dungeon quest awards two extra bullion today in addition to the raid dropped one, allowing an extra purchase! Remember, you can sim bullion items with the Droptimizer, but your rough purchase priority should be:

• Scale of Awakening > Seal of Diurna's Chosen > Primary Trinket > Ashkandur or Voice of the Silent Star (for raiding/non-push M+) > Second Trinket or Seal of Filial Duty.

For trinkets, prioritize:

• Augury of the Primal Flame in all content.
• Ominous Chromatic Essence or Whispering Incarnate Icon for raid, Whispering Incarnate Icon or Neltharion's Call to Chaos for Mythic+.
• Cataclysmic Signet Brand or Elementium Pocket Anvil (>4m) or Algeth'ar Puzzle Box (<3m or M+) as the second trinket, depending on the expected length of the encounter.
  Because Puzzle Box is relatively easy to farm, the second trinket has a lower purchase priority.

Prot Purchase Priorities
Gholak, the Final Conflagration > Seal of Diurna's Chosen > offensive or defensive trinkets

• Offensive trinkets: Manic Grieftorch, Elementium Pocket Anvil, Cataclysmic Signet Brand
• Defensive trinkets: Treemouth's Festering Splinter > Enduring Dreadplate > Fryakk's Tainted Rageheart

[severe birch]

SimC Bug Fix
A handful of Warrior abilities were affecting ability crit instead of global crit (because Blizzard is inconsistent like that), and have now been fixed to affect Fyr'alath, trinkets, etc - thank @modern prairie for noticing.

• Fury gained ~0.7% and Arms gained ~1%, with no change to the APL/gear/rotation necessary.

[severe birch]

Bloodthirst Crit Tracker Update
The Bloodthirst Crit Tracker WeakAura for Season 4 has been updated with a more optimized custom function, and to update the displayed crit chance out of combat with gear or consumable changes; previously it only updated when Bloodthirst was cast or a relevant buff changed.

• There's no practical impact, since it was working correctly before, it's just a little more optimized now.

[severe birch]

Bullion Day Reminder
Assuming you've kept up, you probably want a trinket, the Sark Cloak, or Broodkeeper Ring today.

• Best trinket is very flexible depending on whether your group is capable of maximizing OCE/Icon, you're building for 3m fights (emphasizes Embersoul, Branch, Augury), or longer 5m fights (Brand, Anvil, Augury). If you want something middle ground or for flexing between Arms and Fury, Augury might be the best choice.
• The Sark Cloak is very weak as a far as cantrip items go, but if you have everything else, extra DPS is still extra DPS. The defensive downside doesn't matter in most content, outside of pushing high level M+.
• Broodkeeper Ring doesn't add much in the way of damage, but adds a nice defensive layer, so choose it whenever you feel happy with the rest of your gear.

[Full Bullion purchase priority list here](#updates-midnight message) - if you really don't know/can't decide, remember that you're going to get everything eventually anyway, so don't agonize over it too much.

[severe birch]

🐼 MoP Remix is Now Live

• No detailed guides for it, since the content is extremely open ended and very easy once you start collecting all the new powers, but you can find some general leveling/power recommendations in all the usual places - WH Arms and Fury/IV Arms and Fury.
• Please use the regular #arms and #fury channels to discuss, but know that there's no detailed SimC support at this time, nor has there been much exhaustive testing - just treat it as a fun event and have fun with it.
• Because there is a ton of stuff to collect, I highly recommend prioritizing buying unique cosmetics that aren't farmable outside of the event, before buying those that are.
• For Warriors, I highly recommend starting with Arms, since it has Sweeping Strikes at L10 while Fury doesn't get multitarget tools till ~L33. Don't forget either spec can tmog Strom'kar to fear troll raid bosses! (hotfixed, RIP)

[severe birch]

PTR Patch Notes

• https://www.wowhead.com/news/the-war-within-pre-patch-patch-notes-345356
• Thunderous Roar is now soft capped, Odyn’s Fury already was.

Sims & Guides will be updated tomorrow. Some pages may go up earlier, but should be considered incomplete until then.

[severe birch]

The War Within Updates
The War Within Pre-Patch is (almost) live, including a wide variety of base class and specialization changes

• SimC/Raidbots has been updated with new Pre-Patch APL - this does not include hero talents, as they are not available until full content launch in August.
• Wowhead and Icy-Veins guides have been updated. As the pre-patch is short-term content, these aren't quite as polished as normal, but should still help familiarize all of the new changes.
• Bloodmallet will be updated at a later date.
• A temp FAQ for quick reference is under construction. In the meantime, check the guides, click Load / Export Builds to easily preview new talent builds, or see the individual channel pins for more information.

Going forward, the main Specialization channels will be used for Live Pre-Patch content, while the Beta channels will remain solely for discussing hero talents, new dungeons/raids, and other changes not yet available on live. Please try to keep conversation distinct in order to avoid confusion.

[severe birch]

Severs are now LIVE for TWW Pre-Patch

• don't forget to update your addons and backup your WAs!

[severe birch]

Live Pre-Patch Tuning

• The patch notes didn't lie, Odyn's Fury did get nerfed compared to PTR/Beta, by about 30%
• Arms spec aura buffed by +10%
• Slam hidden aura buffed by +20%
• Overpower buffed by +10%
• Dreadnaught buffed by +10%
• Arms/Prot Execute buffed by +15%
• Thunderous Roar soft cap unconfirmed, but likely
  The above tuning has reached the beta, and now been merged into Raidbots - enjoy your massive sims!

[severe birch]

Assuming I did my overrides correctly

• The OF change takes Fury down ~2.5%, down to ~507k. It's still worth using 2+2p, just by much less than before.
• On the other hand, Arms gained ~12% damage, up to ~560k.
• The two are extremely close in multitarget (fury more burst, arms more priority/sustain), but needs more practical testing to determine their true differences. See the [Fury pins](#fury message) for more info.
  For a brief and shining moment, Fury was actually stronger 🫗

[severe birch]

Talent Build Updates
Wrath and Fury is still bugged in Pre-Patch to not apply its damage bonus, so I've updated Fury's talent builds to reflect that:

• for multitarget, just take Viscous Contempt
• the simple single target change is taking Dancing Blades or Swift Strikes instead
• the annoying single target change is reducing Vicious Contempt to 1 point and taking Onslaught + Tenderize instead
  It's about a 0.4% difference in favor of Onslaught, so if that's not worth the extra keybind... don't.

Post-buffs, Arms ST build has also been updated to use 1/2 Deft Experience and Sharpened Blades.

[severe birch]

Blizzard Broke Something with Talent Strings
So importing/exporting builds isn't working very well right now, whether you're getting them from WH/IV, in-game, or Raidbots. This will also make it difficult to sim accurately, but it's pre-patch so... you know
Update: Wowhead talent calculator strings should be working again.

[severe birch]

Minor Pre-Patch Hotfix

• Corrected an issue that was preventing the Skyfury buff from allowing melee attacks to gain extra Windfury swings.

[severe birch]

New Maxroll Guides
Maxroll has partnered with Echo to produce new World of Warcraft class and raid guides, with Arms and Fury Warrior maintained by the GOAT himself, Revvez!

These things take a lot of work, so check them out, and leave a nice comment behind. As our new FAQs are spun up for The War Within, these guides will also be included along with the normal links to Wowhead, Icy-Veins, and other community resources.

[severe birch]

Upcoming 11.0.2 Changes (link)

• They're the same Arms & Prot tuning changes made on Beta last week, just being merged onto live #old-updates-tww-beta message

[severe birch]

Announcing the Skyhold Streamer Program
Are you a Mythic+ gigachad? A PvP prize fighter? A world race raider of great renown?

We've just launched the Skyhold Streamer program, highlighting streamers within the Warrior community using a special high-visibility role and icon whenever they're live - check it out in the #announcements channel!

[severe birch]

Ravager is bugged has been fixed for Arms and Fury

• Doesn't deal damage, but still triggers Unhinged
• Wrath & Fury is still bugged on live

[severe birch]

Wrath & Fury damage bonus has been fixed on live servers

• It's actually still slightly bugged in that the damage bonus is only active while enraged, but that's not of any practical importance, since Fury is always enraged anyway.
• No change to sims, as the bonus was already active anyway.

[severe birch]

Lots of Hotfix Tuning for all Three Specs

• Spec tuning auras have been zeroed out.
• Most abilities buffed by a commensurate amount to compensate for that change.
• A few abilities seem to have been missed though, resulting in lower than intended performance - Thane's Lightning Strikes, Reckless Abandon ability overrides (Bloodbath/Crushing Blow), Thunder Clap/Blast, Whirlwind, and the Seismic Reverberation portion of Cleave
• Universal spells were tuned for Arms +45% aura, which means they lose a very small amount of damage compared to Fury +50% aura - namely Slam, Bladestorm, Ravager, Spear, Roar, and Slayer's Strike. Individually, these are all inconsequential, but add up to a small hit to Fury overall.

[severe birch]

Missing Spells Hotfixed
Blizzard pushed a new hotfix with most of the spells missed in the earlier aura tuning

• Bloodbath, Crushing Blow, Cleave, and Whirlwind all fixed
• Lightning Strikes & Ground Current buffed by 50% via a new aura effect for Fury (Protection's base aura wasn't zeroed out, so this is correct)
• Thunder Clap and Blast were done messily and are missing ~31% of their damage for Arms and Fury.
• CSHB, Sidearm, Wrecking Throw were also missed, along with a handful of unimportant class-wide spells.

[severe birch]

More Aura Spells Hotfixed

• Cold Steel Hot Blood and Thunder Clap/Blast (for Fury) damage updated to fix last week's the aura changes.
• Arms Thunder Clap is still down, though it's not quite as important, since it is mainly a vehicle for Rend now.
  Remember, this is not a net buff, just a bug fix to put things back to where they were before the auras were zeroed out. Thane still needs major single target love, and a couple class spells still have reduced performance, though their total damage contribution is fairly negligible.

[severe birch]

Extra Bloodthirst/Mortal Strikes from Unhinged No Longer Cleave
I've confirmed this is an intended change. RIP, we hardly knew you 🫗

• For what it's worth the talent is still good, despite a loss of interaction and flavor, as well as a small loss to overall multitarget damage.
• Biggest change is for Arms, no longer wanting to cast Sweeping Strikes before Bladestorm.
• Titanic Rage may take a hit for Fury, since its main value was jumpstarting that cleave and the talent is otherwise fairly weak.
• Otherwise, talent builds are unlikely to change much if at all, but more information to follow.

[severe birch]

(official confirmation for the doubters)

[severe birch]

Added some quick reference leveling info to #1237307348314357801 and #1237307390865571890 in the FAQ

• more fleshed out L80 builds can be found in the guides, and will be added to the FAQ closer to Season 1 launch after the dust of Blizzard's many hotfixes settles.

[severe birch]

Tier to be Disabled on Wednesday for Level 80 Characters

• It's still fine for leveling, though you don't have to wait till 80 to replace it; the bonuses aren't greatly suited to quest content.
• Fyr'alath can be replaced much earlier; see #1237307457382907924.

[severe birch]

Smol PvP Nerfs, Nothing for PvE

• Live with weekly maint on the 3rd
• Several other classes buffed and nerfed though, which will shake things up; check out the full notes
  https://www.wowhead.com/news/war-within-class-tuning-incoming-on-the-weekly-reset-balance-druid-and-346317

[severe birch]

Raidbots is Now Fully Updated for The War Within

• Includes both hero specializations for each spec, in single and multitarget. Characters under L71 without hero talents are no longer supported.
• Please be very aware that simulations are primarily built for Raid and Mythic+ type content, and not reflective of performance in chain pull/speedrun heroic dungeons. There really isn't anything important to sim until Season 1 starts, and you should focus more on item level than min/maxing the stats of gear you'll very quickly replace first on Heroic week and then again on Mythi week anyway.
• Other resources like Bloodmallet/Hero Damage/etc will likely update soon as well.
• Make sure Raidbots is set to use the Latest version under Simulation Options, rather than nightly or weekly.

[severe birch]

Forgot to add this yesterday because I am le tired, but a special thanks to the Warrior Brains for contributing to testing, bug finding, and polishing action lists over the past couple months during the lead up to release, especially @fallen coyote, @spiral vault, @little ice, @stoic tinsel, @opal seal, @twin raft, @ebon acorn, @rare pilot, @rancid holly, @rain abyss, and @edgy phoenix, as well as other Stormforged and contributors who've helped out along the way.

Likewise, extra appreciation to all the members who have continued to chat, discuss, answer questions, and otherwise help maintain this one of the biggest and bestest WoW Class Discord servers. Enjoy TWW everyone!

[severe birch]

Huge Warrior Changes on 11.0.5 PTR

• Champion’s Spear icon has been updated.
• Warbreaker’s radius increased to 10 yards (was 8 yards).
• Crushing Force now increases Bloodthirst critical strike damage by +5/10% instead of Critical Strike chance by +2/4%.
  Some more changes not listed in the notes
• Odyn's Fury and Thunderous Roar tooltips now specify reduced damage beyond 8 targets (they were already softcapped, this is just a tooltip change).
• Colossus Tide of Battle buffed Overpower damage from +5 -> +10% for Protection.
• Arms' specific modifier for Practiced Strikes moved to the spell directly (no functional change).

[severe birch]

Season 1 is Live in NA - Things to do this Week

• Use coffer keys in T8 Bountiful Delves, daily lockout Mythic+0, World Boss, Normal/Heroic Raid.
• Bountiful Delves can only be completed once per day, so run other Delves first to unlock T8.
• Tier 8 Delves were not free on beta, so you may struggle - incoming damage is very high, so consider speccing Protection (set to Arms loot spec) or grabbing a tank/healer friend. Keys are only used at the end of the Delve, so you can't brick them.

Guides and FAQs have been updated for Season 1

• See #dps-faq for links, raid talent builds, and more.
• Raidbots, Bloodmallet, and other tools have also been updated.
• It is highly recommended you do not craft right away. Refer to the #1237307555961634826 for more info.

[severe birch]

Check out our new Biggest Warrior Brain™️ contest in #announcements message and you might just win a prize!

[severe birch]

Incoming Class Tuning
TL;DR: slight buffs for Colossus & Thane, minor AoE nerfs, could have been a whole lot worse!

• Colossus Mountain of Muscle and Scars (all damage bonus) buffed from 4 -> 5%
• Demolish's first two hits buffed by +20%
• Thane Lightning Strikes, Ground Current, & Thunder Blast buffed by +6%
• Thane Strength of the Mountain (Bloodthirst / Rampage damage) buffed from +15->20%
• Arms & Fury Bladestorm nerfed by -10%
• Odyn's Fury nerfed by -15%

[severe birch]

Some Quick Maffs on the Upcoming Tuning
Overall inconsequential buffs and fairly minor nerfs, so the paradigms remain largely unchanged.

• Arms Slayer single target went down ~0.6%.

• Fury Slayer went down ~0.6% in the ST build and ~1.5% in the MT build.

• Arms Slayer multitarget went down ~0.8%.

• Fury Slayer multitarget went down ~2.2%.

• Fury Slayer dungeon/mythic+ went down ~3%.

• Arms Colossus single target went up ~1.5% - still ~8% behind Slayer.

• Fury Thane single target went up ~2.9% - still ~15% behind Slayer.

Note that raw multitarget doesn't translate into raid effectiveness, but since the cooldown timing wasn't changed, Fury is still going to be very good at sniping adds, just not quite so much of a one-person army anymore.

[severe birch]

Upcoming Trinket Tuning
Overall means very little for Warriors.

• Sacbrood nerf is very minor, losing about 0.1%, though remaining one of the best trinkets in higher gear (Mad Queen is very close for double on-use).
• Gear-a-Rang should be slightly better in multitarget, and it was already really good there if you could land the skillshot.
• The majority of other changes were aimed at tanks/healers/casters.

https://www.wowhead.com/news/upcoming-trinket-tuning-for-mythic-week-nerfs-to-sacbrood-spymasters-web-346664

[severe birch]

MORE Mythic Tuning
https://www.wowhead.com/news/more-class-tuning-incoming-fury-warrior-and-arcane-mage-nerfed-346702

• Apparently we didn't doom enough about the nerfs, so here's another -3% to all Fury abilities. Because reasons.
  Still not really a big deal. Fury is still good at the things it's good at, but the changes do more firmly cement Arms as the single target spec.

[severe birch]

Rasha'nan is Now a Single Target Encounter?
WarcraftLogs has decided to remove damage to adds from contributing in logs, making Rasha'nan a single target encounter for ranking purposes. The adds are still very deadly if not killed quickly, and should be priority on progression, though players on farm may opt into full a single target/Arms build and let someone else in their raid kill them instead.

• the same logic has not been applied to Queen Ansurek or any other encounter (though may be at some point in the future).

Update: after much debate and a whole lot of raids wiping due to adds not dying, this change has been reverted.

[severe birch]

More AoE Nerfs on the PTR

• Odyn's Fury and Thunderous Roar are now soft capped at 5 targets instead of 8.
• The notes also state Warbringer is reduced, probably meaning Warbreaker, however no change has been found in datamining yet.
• The rest of the PTR spell changes, including the -3% Fury aura, are already live.
  The change is meant to address how "snipey" Fury is in raid - amounting to ~20% less damage dealt by Odyn's Fury and Thunderous Roar vs 10 targets (Rasha'nan/Ansurek), or a ~4% drop in overall sustained performance (big Mythic+ pulls). The raid nerf is reasonable, but could afford to be compensated via a single target/tier buff, considering that a Ret/DK can kill the same adds in just a couple more seconds while also bringing substantially more single target and sustained cleave.

[severe birch]

More Nerfs than Buffs on the PTR

• Raging Blow (not Crushing Blow) damage increased by 25%.
• Bloodthirst (not Bloodbath) damage increased by 30%.
• Arterial Bleed causes Colossal Might to increase the damage dealt by Deep Wounds and Rend by 3% per stack (was 2%).
• No Stranger to Pain increases total damage ignored by Ignore Pain by 20% (was 15%).
• Overwhelmed now stacks up to 10 times (was 12).
• Culling Cyclone bonus Bladestorm damage reduced to 15% (was 20%).
• Opportunist now increases the damage and critical strike damage of your next Overpower or Raging Blow by 25% (was 30%).

TLDR: Colossus buffed very slightly, Slayer moderately nerfed, Fury very minorly buffed.

• Arms Slayer loses ~2.3%
• Arms Colossus gains ~0.9%
• Fury Slayer loses ~0.2%
• AM Fury gains ~5% (now within <1% of RA)

[severe birch]

Weekly Class Tuning (arriving Oct 8th)
Nerfs to Slayer coming early, alongside large buffs to Thane, and small buffs to Colossus and Fury's tier set bonus.

Colossus

• Arterial Bleed increases Bleed damage by 2 -> 3% per stack.
• No Stranger to Pain increases Ignore Pain by 15 -> 20%.

Mountain Thane

• Lightning Strikes damage increased by 25%.
• Ground Current damage increased by 25%.
• Thorim’s Might causes Lightning Strikes to generate 5 -> 3 Rage.
• Thorim’s Might increases Raging Blow, Execute, and Revenge damage by 15 -> 25%.
• Crashing Thunder now causes Thunder Clap to generate 5 -> 8 Rage (Fury only).
• Strength of the Mountain increases Bloodthirst and Rampage damage by 20 -> 30% (Fury only).
• Thunder Blast generates 10 -> 8 Rage (Protection only).

Slayer

• Culling Cyclone bonus Bladestorm damage reduced from 20 -> 10%.
• Opportunist damage and critical strike damage of your next Overpower/Raging Blow reduced from 30 -> 20%.

Fury

• 2p Tier Bonus: Bloodthirst increases the damage of your next Rampage by 10 -> 15%.
• 4p Tier Bonus: When Raging Blow resets its own cooldown, the damage of your next Bloodthirst is increased by 10 -> 20%, stacking up to 2 times.

[severe birch]

Some Preliminary Numbers on Upcoming Live Hotfixes
This is without considering any potential action updates as a result of these changes.

• Slayer Arms down -1.3% in single target, down -0.9% vs 5 targets.
• Colossus Arms up +0.9% in single target, no change in multi.
• Fury tier changes increase the full 2+4p bonus from +2.1 -> +3.5% in pure single target.
• Slayer Fury neutral change in single target, up +0.6% in multi.
• Thane Fury up +9.2% in single target, up +6.6% in multi. This puts Thane ~7% behind Slayer in single target, ~2% behind in single target with a multitarget build, and +12% ahead in multitarget though it doesn't deal damage nearly as quickly.

This does not include other previously announced PTR changes, including reducing Overwhelmed to 10 stacks, buffing baseline Bloodthirst/Raging Blow, or reducing Odyn's Fury/Thunderous Roar soft target caps.

TL;DR Small nerf for Arms single target, and a big increase to Thane for Fury, though it is still behind Slayer in raid. Thane will probably make a strong showing in Mythic+, though Slayer still has much faster burst, an easier rotation, and isn't subject to ground targeting.

On a personal note, I would call these good changes overall. While Arms did get undeservedly nerfed, it is a small change that won't have much practical impact, and the Slayer changes reduce the desire to game Opportunist. IMO Fury could still use more single target/cleave improvement to balance out the upcoming OF/TR nerfs, and Thane still doesn't feel like it has a place in raid but will pick up more value in Mythic+.

[severe birch]

Happy Thane Day
Mountain Thane [updates are live](#updates-midnight message) in game and Raidbots, offering comparable single target to Slayer and upwards 14% increased sustained cleave in Mythic+. Slayer is certainly still viable in Mythic+ and has more instant burst, but Thane will generally perform better overall in higher keys.

• Raid builds are unlikely to change; Thane might have some use on Council, though Broodtwister and Queen still greatly value Slayer's instant burst.
• There are new links in #1273899855852339200 for Mountain Thane. The main build uses Odyn's Fury and Titan's Torment for higher overall multitarget, while the while the Berserker's Torment variant offers slightly more single target and one less button to juggle.
• The Odyn's Fury and Thunderous Roar [target cap reductions](#updates-midnight message) are not live until the 22nd.

[severe birch]

Mountain Thane Thunder Blast Bug PSA
Some, though not all, players have reported that Thunder Blast fails to proc correctly from Bloodthirst/Bloodbath. What exactly causes this bug or why only some players are affected is not yet known, but here's what we do know:

• The bug appears to be just about all or nothing. Rather than not getting as many procs as expected, it appears that either Bloodthirst/bath proc Thunder Blast at the expected rate or close to none at all.
• Snap Induction and Avatar of the Storm still activate Thunder Blast as expected.
• Deleting and restoring your WTF folder has been reported to at least temporarily fix the issue, though it appears to come back after an indeterminate amount of time (possibly related to going through a loading screen, but unconfirmed).
• You can also try to Scan & Repair from the battle.net launcher.

The best way to test is to go hit a dummy. If Bloodthirst/bath occasionally triggers Thunder Blast, then you're good. If it doesn't trigger at all after few dozen casts, you should probably try some troubleshooting:

• Disable all addons, back up and delete your WTF folder - see if the behavior resolves.
• If it does, restore only necessary mods/WTF settings first, and incrementally add more to see when/if the bug comes back. Try entering a follower dungeon or going through another loading screen, and test some more, etc.

[severe birch]

_Mountain Thane Thunder Blast Bug Squashed!
The aforementioned bug stopping Bloodthirst from triggering Thunder Blast has been fixed (blame Prot).

[severe birch]

"Final" Patch 11.0.5 Notes
None of this is new, but is likely the "final" version of changes to come with the patch next week:

• Champion's Spear icon has been updated.
• Thunderous Roar now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets (was 8) - this doesn't affect the DoT, so isn't actually that much of a nerf.
• Slayer Overwhelmed debuff reduced from 12 -> 10 max stacks.
  Arms
• Warbreaker’s radius increased from 8 -> 10 yards.
• Warbringer (probably means Warbreaker) now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets - this doesn't change debuff application, so isn't important.
  Fury
• Crushing Force now increases Bloodthirst/Bloodbath critical strike damage by 5/10%, instead of critical strike chance by 2/4%.
• Bloodthirst (not Bloodbath) damage increased by 30%.
• Raging Blow (not Crushing Blow) damage increased by 25%.
• Odyn’s Fury now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets (was 8) - this does affect the DoT, so is a more noticeable nerf on Rasha'nan, Broodtwister, Queen, and the occasional large M+ pull.

Overall, instant burst AoE going down a bit and Slayer Arms catches a very small stray nerf, though Fury's lost damage is compensated; the major change being that Anger Management should become very competitive with Reckless Abandon. Some WIP numbers courtesy of Krisp:

• Slayer is ~6% ahead of Thane in full single target.
• Reckless Abandon is ~0.7% ahead of Anger Management for Slayer.
• Reckless Abandon is ~0.4% ahead of Anger Management for Thane.
• Raid AoE Slayer and Thane builds are virtually equal in single target (Slayer is still burstier, which is generally better for raid).
• Mythic+ RA and AM Thane builds are virtually equal in sustained multitarget (AM is desyncs though, so there's more room for error), AM ~2-3% behind RA for Slayer.
  Guides and Raidbots will be updated by the time the patch goes live on Tuesday.

[severe birch]

Patch 11.0.5 is Live but Broken
Notes for the various changes can be found above, but the TLDR is that Fury loses ~3-5% in M+ and heavy AoE raid fights due to target cap changes, Anger Management is now very competitive with Reckless Abandon (although more desynced, so in practice RA is generally better, or at least easier), and Arms has lost a very minor amount of single target damage.

Unfortunately Blizzard fucked up and forgot to merge in last week's live hotfixes - this means the Mountain Thane changes, Fury tier set buffs, Slayer nerfs, Colossus buffs, and other changes here are not present on live servers. This has been fixed

• Raidbots and other resources will be updated shortly to reflect everything on live servers, but please keep in mind that everything will be kind of scuffed until Blizzard figures out how to hotfix the missing changes.

[severe birch]

Unannounced Changes

• The Brutal Finish bug has been fixed for Arms.
• Unhinged no longer consumes Bloodbath, Bloodcraze, or Burst of Power, but continues to benefit from them.
  After Unhinged was changed to no longer cleave onto multiple targets, it created a situation in which players didn't want Bladestorm/Ravager auto-cast Bloodbath, as the buffed spell would only hit only one target instead of several. With this change, Unhinged still does not hit multiple targets, but the buffs are not lost either, which results in a small buff for Reckless Abandon Slayer builds, as Bladestorm will now cast multiple single target Bloodbaths instead of just one.

It's unclear if this is intended, because Arms' Overpower and Executioner's Precision are consumed by Unhinged, though the issue of not being able to cleave those buffs is also less pronounced for Arms than it is for Fury.

Fury Hotfixes are Back
Kudos to Blizzard on a quick turn around - the missing Fury tier and hero spec adjustments from last week's hotfixes have been added to live servers. Everyone gets to enjoy Mountain Thane again!

[severe birch]

Sorting Out Unhinged Changes

• Unhinged benefits from but does not consume Bloodbath, Bloodcraze, Fierce Followthrough, or Burst of Power, allowing it to trigger multiple Bloodbaths.
• Unhinged no longer appears to trigger Reap or Thunder Blast, though it does trigger Colossal Might, the 4p Arms/Fury Tier bonuses, and Deep Wounds.

For the sake of numbers, triggering multiple Bloodbaths is a fairly small (ballpark 0.2-0.6%, depending on how hard you game those non-expiring buffs) single target increase for Slayer, but not triggering hero talents is also a noticeable nerf (~0.5% single target, 1.5%+ multitarget depending on size). This is even more pronounced on Broodtwister and Queen Ansurek, upwards 10% as those Reap procs contribute more during short add windows with lots of targets.

It's not quite clear if either of these are bugged or intended, so these changes are not yet implemented in Raidbots. If there hasn't been any word or further observed changes by tomorrow, they will be implemented then.

[severe birch]

BRD Timewalking has Some New Stuff
But they're capped at 626 item level and not particularly competitive unless they happen to be item level upgrades. The only item explicitly worth considering is the Flame Wrath polearm, which trades secondary stats for a direct damage proc.

• The proc deals split damage, so its only really useful in single target. Fury can use it with either a 636 crafted in the mainhand, or you can spend Sparks on Duskthread embellishments and use a 639 mainhand + Flame Wrath instead. Arms will replace it with a 636+ weapon.
• Weapon item level is still very important for multitarget, so I don't recommend using this in Mythic+ or most multitarget raid fights, only the two single target ones.

[severe birch]

Both Unhinged bugs have been FIXED on live servers
Confirmed this morning that Unhinged not consuming some buffs and not triggering others was unintended, and just verified that the fix has been deployed on live servers.

The bugged behavior was not implemented into Raidbots (for this reason), so no further updates should be necessary.

[severe birch]

Weekly Warrior Tuning
Big buffs coming to Warriors with the next weekly reset - clearly this is a mistake and they meant to say reduced 🤫

• Execute damage increased by 10%.
  Arms
• Mortal Strike damage increased by 15%.
• Overpower damage increased by 15%.
• Dreadnaught damage increased by 15%.
• Cleave damage increased by 20%.
  Fury
• Bloodthirst damage increased by 20%.
• Bloodbath damage increased by 20%.
• Rampage damage increased by 10%.
  Protection
• Colossus: Demolish single-target damage increased by 15%.
  Heroes
• Colossus: Demolish single-target damage increased by 15%.
• Mountain Thane: Lightning Strike damage increased by 30% (Fury only).
• Reap the Storm damage increased by 25%. This change does not affect PvP combat.
• Slayer’s Strike damage increased by 15%.

[severe birch]

Preliminary Numbers on Upcoming Tuning
This does not include any potential talent/rotational changes, of which there will almost certainly be over the coming days.

• Arms Colossus: +8.6% single target, +8.2% multitarget
• Arms Slayer: +9% single target, +9.5% multitarget
• Fury Thane: +8.6% single target, +4.7% multitarget
• Fury Slayer: +6.7% single target, +6.5% multitarget

Comparatively speaking,

• Single target is Arms Slayer >> Fury Slayer > Arms Colossus > Fury Thane
• Raw multitarget is Fury Thane >> Arms Colossus > Fury Slayer ~= Arms Slayer
  https://i.gyazo.com/9588bc812f0c93a8b80ae79b946a3126.png

[severe birch]

Buffs are in, but Not What You'd Expect
You know how they say not to believe everything you read online? Turns out the tuning we got is a little different from the tuning that was previewed.

• Mortal Strike was buffed by +30% instead of the anticipated +15%.
• Fury's off-hand Execute was not buffed by +10% alongside the mainhand, instead it was nerfed by -2.3%. This fixes a long-running issue where the off-hand had a higher coefficient, so is likely intended, but is actually a +5.57 damage buff instead.

Raidbots is updated with the (actual) new numbers, though APL will likely receive further updates today/tomorrow to account for these changes.

[severe birch]

Mistaken Mortal Strike Buff Reverted
Blizz has fixed their mistake, yay...🎈

• They said Execute has been increased by 7%, unless they changed the value again, the raw coefficient change is actually +3.6% (or +5.75% after adjusting for the OH penalty, since bigger mainhand number is better), but none of that really matters such Execute is a very low priority button at the moment anyway.
• Arms/Prot Execute still got +10%, only Fury did not - see above.

Warriors still got +7-9% this week though, so there's not really much to complain about.

[severe birch]

No New Patch 11.0.7 Spell Changes Yet
They're the same as this week's hotfixes. Although they do include the (unintended) +30% buff to Mortal Strike, it's probably not meant to be on the PTR either.

[severe birch]

Warlord's Torment Bugfix Now Live
Since beta, Warlord's Torment continued to generate +100% rage from abilities (Charge & Skullsplitter, the bonus does not work on Avatar or Execute refunds), while only autos were reduced to the intended +25%. This fix reduces the rage generated from those specials, while autos are unchanged.

• This has virtually no impact on performance, since the vast majority of rage comes from autos and those special abilities are not used frequently during Avatar.

[severe birch]

No New Patch 11.0.7 Spell Changes in This Week's Build

• Mortal Strike "nerf" is just replicating last week's hotfix, not a real change.
  With the amount of "fine tuning" we got over the last month, I wouldn't expect much from this patch anyway, bigger changes are likely to come in 11.1.

[severe birch]

Colossus Survivability Buff Hotfix
For both Arms and Protection this coming week 💪

• Demolish now reduces damage from enemies by up to 5 -> 10%.
• Mountain of Muscle and Scars now passively reduces damage taken by 2.5 -> 5%.
  and in PvP only
• Lightning Strike damage increased by 50% in PvP combat.

[severe birch]

Mountain Thane SimC/Raidbots Bug Fix
Corrected an issue in which Fury's Thunder Blast damage was being incorrectly increased by a Protection-only modifier. Thanks (or blame) to @past lark and @ebon acorn for noticing the initial discrepancy.

Result is -2% in single target and -5% against five targets, which still leaves Thane around 5% ahead of Slayer in multitarget. No change for Protection.

[severe birch]

WCL Ranking Changes in Patch 11.0.7
WarcraftLogs has once again decided to dictate how players approach encounters, with some changes to Ulgrax and Queen Ansurek in Patch 11.0.7 on Dec 17th.

- Silken Tomb damage removed on Heroic and Normal difficulties.
- Damage done to adds on Ulgrax will be excluded, and the intermission will be marked as downtime.```
Apparently there was a poll, but idk where because they don't advertise for shit.

[severe birch]

Patch 11.0.7 Ring - Cyrene's Circlet
As you've undoubtedly heard, the special ring in Patch 11.0.7 has been buffed repeatedly. Here's a quick breakdown:

• The ring now starts at 639 ilvl, earned very quickly through the Siren Isle campaign.
• Each week for six weeks, a short quest will increase its item level further, capping at 658 ilvl.
• There are 12 unique Citrine gems split into three types, one of each can be socketed into the ring. Unlike the Onyx Annulet, these gems have predetermined drop locations and do not need to be upgraded.

Depending on which gems you get day 1, the ring may already be worth using at 639 ilvl, but it's easily best in slot by 658 ilvl.

• For the most part, the best gems are Stormbringer/Thunderlord, Fathomdweller, & Legendary Skipper for Arms and Fury, swapping Fathom -> Undersea for Protection, but Raidbots Top Gear has new options for easy comparisons.

[severe birch]

Unnanounced Patch 11.0.7 Warrior Changes
A few unannounced changes with today's patch affecting Warriors specifically:

• The Overwhelmed debuff from Slayer and Wrecked debuff from Demolish are now properly whitelisted, meaning they no longer affect outside sources of damage (namely Mad Queen's Mandate) - this can be up to a ~1% nerf, depending on how much outside damage you have.
• Ravager now consistently ticks 6 times at various amounts of haste.
• Consuming Slayer's Marked for Execution on cleaved targets now correctly reduces the cooldown of Bladestorm.
• Bladestorm's offhand damage ticks now have damage variance (this doesn't matter, just a consistency change).
• The final strike of Demolish can no longer be parried.

[severe birch]

__Big Changes Coming in Patch 11.1 - PTR Dev Notes __
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/undermined-development-notes/2031155

Lots to unpack, so I'll just do the cliff notes. Overall I'll say these are good changes, but we'll get a more complete picture once the talent tree layouts are revealed.
Warrior

• Talent tree rearranged. Weapon specializations are now 2-point talents, but give an extra bonus (movespeed for Fury, damage reduction for Arms, leech for Prot). More defense from Reinforced Plates, "more distinct access to Avatar for each spec"
• Hard to say how this plays out, we'll know more once the tree is revealed.
  Arms
  Small, but good, changes focus on using Mortal Strike/Cleave on cooldown instead of focusing on its buffs, less emphasis on passive bleeds.
• Martial Prowess nerfed, Mortal Strike/Cleave buffed to compensate.
• Execute no longer triggers Colossal Might (this is actually a good thing, since it encouraged spamming Execute instead of pressing MS).
  Fury
  Talent changes pull back on Fury's instant burst and throughput, while creating stronger cooldown windows at the cost of a weaker general rotation. General idea is popping Reck/Avatar/Roar and machine gunning low cooldown Bloodbaths and lots of bleed damage.
• Titan's Torment now reduces Rampage cost and Bloodthirst cooldown.
• Reckless Abandon now enable Bloodbath/Crushing Blow during Reck instead of after Rampage. Bloodbath triggers a bleed, and CB has increased crit damage.
  Slayer
• Talents now require Sudden Death to also be talented - this makes sense from a mechanical perspective, whether it's good or bad really just depends on what our new talent builds end up looking like.
  Protection
• Less rage generation intended to reduce Ignore Pain spam, while buffing individual casts.

Season 2 Warrior Set Bonuses
https://www.wowhead.com/news/all-patch-11-1-undermine-d-class-tier-set-bonuses-in-the-war-within-season-2-355136

Abilities randomly trigger and stack "Winning Streak" which is a minor damage buff; casting Overpower/Rampage consumes it. Kind of odd and gimmicky, but like any gambling, could have some potential for big payouts.

Arms

• (2) Set: Your spells and abilities have a chance to activate a Winning Streak! increasing the damage of your Mortal Strike and Cleave by 2%, stacking up to 10 times. Overpower has a 15% chance to remove Winning Streak!
• (4) Set: When your Winning Streak! ends, Overpower deals 20% additional damage and recharges 75% faster for 2 seconds per stack of Winning Streak! you had.
  Fury
• (2) Set: Your spells and abilities have a chance to activate a Winning Streak! increasing the damage of your Rampage by 2%, stacking up to 10 times. Rampage has a 15% chance to remove Winning Streak!
• (4) Set: When you gain a stack of Winning Streak! you have an even chance to either cause your next Bloodthirst to deal 15% increased damage and have 25% increased chance to critically strike or cause your next Raging Blow to deal 15% increased damage and generate 2 additional Rage.
  Protection
• (2) Set: Each time you take damage you have a chance to activate Luck of the Draw! causing you to cast Shield Wall for 4 seconds. Your damage done is increased by 15% for 10 seconds after Luck of the Draw! activates.
• (4) Set: During Luck of the Draw! Sheild Slam’s chance to critically strike is increased by 50% and its critical strikes reduce the cooldown of Shield Charge by 6 seconds.

[severe birch]

New Talent Trees Are Available on Wowhead
https://www.wowhead.com/ptr-2/talent-calc/warrior/fury

Major Changes

• Overwhelming Rage is 1 point for +30 rage
• Reinforced Plates is 2 points for +5/10% armor & stam
• Weapon Spec (now 2 points) leads to T. Roar
• Endurance Training removed
• Cruel Strikes and Wild Strikes both lead to Avatar
• Armored to the Teeth still leads to Spear
  Overall builds are still very similar, while gaining an extra 10% stamina. There is a little less flexibility in having reduced opportunity to drop points from Reinforced Plates as opposed to Overwhelming Rage, so builds trying to take Honed Reflexes, Bitter Immunity, or Shattering Throw will be stretched a bit tighter, but I think we come out ahead overall. The bottom of the tree is also greatly improved, though at the expense of skipping Cruel Strikes (just because it's generally the weakest of the four talents).

No changes to Arms/Fury layouts at this time.

[severe birch]

Patch 11.0.7 Citrine Gems Ungated
A new hotfix now allows players to complete more excavations for gems which previously required waiting for their weekly rotation.
In other words, you'll be able to get your best gems this week, without week(s) of waiting for the right events.

[severe birch]

Patch 11.1 PTR Test Observations So Far

• Spell Reflect has a new graphic
• Arms 4p extends duration rather than value, making it a very weak bonus.
• The Arms 4p can overwrite itself, potentially replacing a 20s buff with a 2s one (lmfao).
• The Fury 4p Double Down buff does not stack, though you can have both Bloodthirst and Raging Blow bonuses independently at the same time.
• Avatar of the Storm triggers the new version of Titan's Torment.
• Reckless Abandon does trigger from Unbridled Ferocity and Berserker's Torment.
• Bloodbath does appear to extend duration near infinitely, allowing you to potentially build up a minute(s) long DoT.
• Bloodbath's DoT is not cleaved by Whirlwind (blizz plz )

[severe birch]

Protection PTR Changes
Protection love this week, with buffs intended to smooth out rage income and and increase Shield Slam damage to compensate for less resets

• Spec Aura buffed from +36 -> 43% (+5%).
• Shield Slam damage buffed by 20%.
• Brace for Impact now stacks 3 times for+10% Shield Slam damage and +5% block value, instead of 5 times for +5/3% respectively.
• Punish buffed from 2 -> 4% reduced damage taken.
• Instigate causes Devastator to generate 1 -> 2 rage.
• Bloodsurge buffed back to 5 rage per tick and supposedly had its proc rate changed (tbd, should also apply to Arms).
• (Thane) Avatar of the Storm procs now last 4 -> 6s for Prot only.
• (Colossus) Practiced Strikes causes Shield Slam to generate +3 rage.
  For Fury
• Bloodborne tooltip now includes Bloodbath (buff already applied, just wasn't written)
  For PvP
• Berserker Roar nerfed from 15 -> 10 seconds.

[severe birch]

Early PTR Updates
Arms tier completely reworked to avoid inconsistent refresh rate issues, with the 2p now stacking Overpower & Dreadnaught damage (like Fury) and the 4p granting Haste and MS/Cleave damage based on number of stacks.

• New 2p: Your abilities have a chance to begin a Winning Streak!, increasing the damage of Overpower by 5%, stacking up to 10 times. Overpower has a 15% chance to end your Winning Streak!
• New 4p: When your Winning Streak! ends you gain 2% Haste and your Mortal Strike and Cleave damage is increased by 2% per stack of Winning Streak! you had for 12 seconds.

Protection tier updated:

• Luck of the Draw! duration increased to 12 seconds (was 10 seconds).
• Shield Charge cooldown reduction increased to 12 seconds (was 6 seconds).
• Fixed an issue causing Luck of the Draw! to incorrectly modify Shield Slam’s critical strike chance.

Other changes:

• Barbaric Training no longer increases the rage cost of Revenge for Protection.
• Ignore Pain coefficient formula changed (needs testing).

[severe birch]

New DPS Warrior Tuning on the PTR Has Been Reverted, womp womp
Arms

• Mortal Strike buffed by +20%
• Cleave buffed by +10%
• Overpower buffed by +20%
• Dreadnaught buffed by +20%
• Slam buffed by +30%
• Execute buffed by +10% (also for Prot)

Fury
For context, Bloodthirst and Raging Blow now have the same coefficients that Bloodbath and Crushing Blow did pre-patch.

• Bloodthirst & Bloodbath buffed by +20%
• Raging Blow & Crushing Blow buffed by +20%
• Rampage buffed by +20%
• Odyn's Fury buffed by +15%

Also some Prot War bluepost comments after the last few rounds of changes
https://www.wowhead.com/news/blizzard-on-protection-warrior-design-goals-and-feedback-on-11-1-ptr-366720

[severe birch]

New PTR Build includes Warrior Changes
Includes everything from last week, as well as

• New visual animations for Colossus Smash and Warbreaker.
• Warbreaker’s area of effect is now centered around a point 1 yard in front of the Warrior (doesn't seem to have any noticeable impact).
• Frothing Berserker now has a chance to refund 25 -> 50% of the Rage spent on Revenge.
• Protection 2p tier duration increased from 10 -> 12s.
• Protection 4p tier cooldown reduction increased from 6 -> 12s.
• All damage bonuses from Arms/Fury/Protection tier reduced by 50% in PvP.

[severe birch]

Shield Slam Reset Procs to be Buffed in Next Build

• In next week’s PTR build, it will be increased to 25%.
  "After playing with this change, we feel that this gets Protection Warrior to where we want it to be-- an active and engaging playstyle without the rotation being dominated by too-frequent Shield Slam resets."

https://www.wowhead.com/news/further-update-on-protection-warrior-11-1-ptr-feedback-nerfed-too-much-369028

[severe birch]

Smol PTR Build
Protection

• Chance to reset the cooldown on Shield Slam from Devastator and Strategist reduced to 25% (was 20%).
• Ignore Pain’s icon now displays the remaining absorb amount as a percentage of the maximum absorb amount.
• Punish reduces damage the punished target deals to you by 3% (was 4%).
  Arms
• Fixed some issues that could cause the new Colossus Smash and Warbreaker visuals to not display correctly.
  Colossus Smash no longer spawns weapons, and Warbringer's animation has been sped up a little, making both look a lot cleaner

[severe birch]

PTR Fury Hotfixes
A few unannounced hotfixes on the PTR, separate from the tuning earlier today

• Fury Execute buffed by +50%
• Bloodthirst buffed by +15%
• Bloodbath buffed by +20%, and its DoT now ticks every 3s instead of 1s (66% nerf)
• Raging Blow buffed by +20%
• Crushing Blow buffed by +20% and has +20% crit damage (up from +10%)
• Rampage buffed by +20%
  This is a significant (ballpark +15%) overall buff for the Patch 11.1 Reckless Abandon build... let's just hope these don't get reverted again!

[severe birch]

Major Warrior Tuning on the PTR
Arms

• Slam buffed by +19%
• Execute buffed by +20% (only for Arms)
• Overpower & Dreadnaught buffed by +20%
• Mortal Strike buffed by +20%
• Whirlwind buffed by +40%

Fury

• Onslaught buffed by +30%
• Whirlwind buffed by +30% (only for Fury)

Protection

• All Protection damage buffed by +20%

Hero Talents

• Colossus Demolish buffed by +30%
• Colossus Practiced Strikes bonus Mortal Strike and Cleave damage buffed from +15 -> +20%
• Colossus Arterial Bleed bonus buffed from +3 -> +5% (Arms only)
• Slayer Opportunist bonus Overpower damage buffed from +20 -> 25%
• Thane Strength of the Mountain bonus Bloodthirst/Rampage damage nerfed from +30 -> +25%
• Thane Thunder Blast buffed by +14% (Fury only)

[severe birch]

Upcoming Embellishment and Enchanting Changes in Patch 11.1
https://www.wowhead.com/news/buy-enchanted-crests-directly-off-vendor-and-enchants-tuning-patch-11-1-373134

• One time only Profession Spec resets.
• Enchanted Crests are no longer made by Enchanters, instead purchased from vendors in Dornogal.
• Authority of Radiant Power damage increased by 23% and rank 3 Authority of the Depths damage increased by 48%.

[severe birch]

Who Would Have Guessed There'd be Warrior Nerfs?
https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/additional-class-updates-for-undermined/562776

• All Arms and Fury Warrior ability damage reduced by 5%.

Kind of odd tuning, since this reduces all abilities, even those that weren't buffed or being used (like Bladestorm, Ravager, Sidearm, Onslaught, Odyn's Fury), but overall very minor and both specs still look like they'll be quite strong in the upcoming Season. Also Prot somehow dodged nerfs... for now.

[severe birch]

Guides and Community Tools are updated for Patch 11.1

• Wowhead & Icy-Veins guides are updated with new talent builds, gear, rotations, changelogs, cheat sheets, and so on. The Mythic+ and Raid pages will be updated again this weekend to coincide with the start of Season 2.
• Raidbots main branch has been updated for Season 2, though expect further tweaks, updates, and bug fixes.
• Bloodmallet will likely update over the next week, before any of the important new gear is obtainable.
• The Discord FAQ will be updated tomorrow, more or less identical to what you'll find in the main guides
  Expect further updates over the following week as we get more hands on testing and tuning.

On a personal note, some of you may already know that I spent the last several weeks in and out of the hospital, so this has been a particularly hectic PTR cycle, but our expert team of contributors have done an outstanding job of helping test and theorycraft, directly contributing to APL and sim implementation. Special shoutout to @rain abyss, @fallen coyote, @spiral vault, and @little ice - you da real ones.

Note: Make sure you fix your talents before trying to sim or raidbots will crash!

[severe birch]

Pre-Raid Arms Tuning

Execute damage reduced by 15%.

As expected, Arms is catching a nerf before the start of the new season, though it is a much smaller one than expected and may even come with a small silver lining.

• Slayer loses ~3.6% and Colossus (Juggernaut) loses ~2.6%, while Colossus (Battlelord) only loses ~1.8%.
• For Colossus, Battlelord looks like it may officially overtake Juggernaut by a very small (~1%) margin.
• Slayer is still a comfortable ~4-5% ahead of Colossus (Battlelord), so there's absolutely still a place for the Execute-centric build.

Overall, this a slap on the wrist that does reduce Arms' core capability by a small margin, but without neutering the spec completely. I'd even go so far as to call it a good change as far as nerfs go, as it's greatly preferrable to reducing Mortal Strike or just another flat aura nerf. If it helps Battlelord to finally surpass Juggernaut for Colossus builds, that'll be another added benefit - creating a little more variety among Arms' playstyles, even if by a very small margin. Either way, we're still eating very well.

Note: This change does not affect Protection.

[severe birch]

Cyrce's Circlet Live Hotfixes

Roaring War-Queen's Citrine chance to trigger has been reduced slightly. Legendary Skipper's Citrine no longer triggers Roaring War-Queen's Citrine effect.

• Largely targeted at reducing the group effects of War-Queen, this takes the ring down by ~1.2%, which isn't a lot overall, but is for a single piece of gear. As a result, Windsinger's is now slightly better than Legendary Skipper, and a well-budgeted max item level ring should come out noticeably ahead.

In other words, you'll continue to use Cyrce's Circlet (with Windsinger) on prog, but Arms should eventually replace it with a good Mythic ring. Fury may continue to use Circlet unless they want the extra stamina.

[severe birch]

Season 2 Updates Now Live to include Slayer-Ravager Support
Including #dps-faq updates, #1237307555961634826 crafting recommendations, #1237307348314357801, #1237307390865571890 for bosses & M+, and so on

• Keep in mind that most of the talent builds are based on a combination of PTR testing and speculation, so expect changes and updates as we go. This is the starting point, not the end.

Ravager is also now fully supported for Arms Slayer builds. Early tests indicate a very small (~0.5%) increase in Season 1 gear, while Bladestorm moves back ahead with S2 tier - the only real advantage is funneling in the Execute phase, which isn't super relevant for most non-race players. Use it at your own discretion, as we have no indication when or if Blizzard will do something to change it.

Make sure to also check #announcements to see the winners of our Season 1 Clip Contest!

[severe birch]

Season 2 Fury 2p Also Activates 4p Bonus
This is absolutely a bug and likely to get fixed sooner rather than later, so do with it what you will.

Update: this now appears to have been fixed.

[severe birch]

New Help & Log Review Channel
Due to increased interested in the new season, the Log Review channel can become easily jumbled by concurrent conversations, so we've decided to migrate to a new card style in the #1347646810457636974 channel, wherein individuals can create their own threads for more focused discussion.

These cards don't need to be strictly related to logs, but are intended for detailed gameplay questions, so continue to direct simple Q&A to the appropriate specialization channel, DPS/Prot FAQ, or just

[severe birch]

Spell Reflect Weak Aura Updated
Torkal's spell reflect weak aura has been updated for Season 2 after correcting an instance ID issue. Only tested in one dungeon so far, but everything appears to be working properly and back on easy mode again!

• I personally wouldn’t recommend the extra voice pack though, just use the defaults.

https://wago.io/pjl-p3su9

[severe birch]

Warbreaker Animation Updated Again on Patch 11.1.5 PTR
Still a spin instead of the old stomp, but with no more phantom weapons.

• No change to Colossus Smash.
• No other class changes so far.

[severe birch]

New Bloodthirst "Kaching" Crit Tracking Weakaura
Similar to Dragonflight, with a few updates:

• Now accounts for TWW Season 2 tier set bonus (Double Down).
• Now triggers at a lower health threshold during Vicious Contempt.
• No longer tracks Cold Steel Hot Blood/Gushing Wound, which isn't a rotational consideration.
  Remember this is not the only time you want to press Bloodthirst, just a guideline for when you will want to press it. Other similarly helpful WAs can be found in the #1237307732705415228 message section of the #dps-faq.

https://wago.io/hKMfHReC2

[severe birch]

Extra Fractured Sparks of Fortunes Now Available in Dornogal
Rather than remove stuff, Blizzard is giving everyone an extra half spark, for a minimum of two full crafting sparks this week. That means 2h weapons can now be crafted.

At this point in the week, I personally recommend waiting for next week's vault anyway and deciding what to make then, since that may influence your decision. Before you make anything though, I highly recommend reading over #1237307555961634826 in the #dps-faq, since there are a lot of factors to consider.

• If you don't have a Mythic track weapon or expect to get one quickly, it is generally recommended that both Arms and Fury Warriors craft embellished weapons first, and swap to double Duskthread later on. If you do have a M track weapon, Arms can go straight to Duskthread, while Fury needs to consider what offhands are available and whether crafting a weapon for the upgrade discount will be a more efficient use of crests.

[severe birch]

Upcoming Class and Trinket Tuning
Live today, a lot of direct damage trinkets have been buffed by upwards 20%.

• Mister Lock-n-Stock and Viscera are the biggest standouts, as very competitive single target options.
• Noggenfogger sims well, but isn't completely reliable since the NPC can sometimes get stuck or die. It's also doesn't get attributed in logs and is rumored to be bugged in game as well.

With the weekly reset, Protection is catching a moderate nerf, est at -5% ST and -12% AoE%:

• Shield Slam damage reduced by 5%.
• Colossus: Practiced Strikes’s bonus to Shield Slam and Revenge damage reduced to 10% (was 20%).
• Colossus: One Against Many reduced to 3% per target (was 5%).
• Colossus: Tide of Battle reduced to 7% per stack (was 10%).
• Mountain Thane: Strength of the Mountain’s bonus to Shield Slam damage increased to 15% (was 10%).

Also with the weekly reset, and only in PvP, Arms is receiving a noticeable buff:

• Execute damage increased by 25% in PvP combat.
• Bladestorm damage increased by 20% in PvP combat.
• Demolish damage increased by 15% in PvP combat.
  Developers’ notes: Execute, Bladestorm, and Demolish have not had the impact we would like from them, so we are increasing their damage.

[severe birch]

__Mechano-Core Stonks ⏬ __
A SimC bug fixed today has caused the Mechano-Core Amplifier to drop in value. It's still a surprisingly competitive trinket, especially given its item level, though is no longer counted among the best setups for Fury, being beaten out by the newly buffed Mister Lock-N-Stalk, Seaforium (with some timing reservations), Viscera, and House of Cards.

• Previously, both the highest and lowest secondary buffs could be active at the same time, however they actually replace one another in-game.
  This change is already live on Raidbots, so you can check it out for yourself.

[severe birch]

Noggenfogger Bug Fix
Another disproportionately strong delve trinket, Noggenfogger Ultimate Deluxe, was hotfixed last night to no longer scale with attack speed bonuses. Although it received a 20% damage increase to compensate, it is now definitively dead as far as we're concerned.

This is a good thing, because it wasn't a particularly reliable trinket in the first place, it just looked very strong due to the unintended attack speed scaling.

[severe birch]

Should Stix Bunkjunker be Removed from All-Stars?
Warcraft Logs has created a new poll, asking users whether Stix Bunkjunker should be removed from factoring into All-Stars rankings for all raid difficulties.

• Unlike previous changes in Nerub-ar Palace which removed damage contribution from adds altogether, this does not change or manipulate parses, it just causes those parses to not be calculated on All-Stars and average raid performance percentiles, due to how RNG the fight can be (encouraging you to throw away balls in order to rank, or at the very least demanding you get well-timed bombs and every other player perform theirs well too). With this change, your parses still "matter" in the sense that you can still get ranks, but they "don't matter" in the sense that they will not contribute to your overall raid performance metrics.
• I'm not going to tell anyone how to vote, but I'm generally in favor of this and think it's a better option than removing adds outright, particularly for this fight since ball timings still affect single target performance even if adds weren't counted. If you want to argue for, against, or otherwise, visit the Warcraft Logs discord.

Vote at the top of the Warcraft Logs homepage, before the poll closes on Friday (4/4).
The Poll has now closed, with WCL reporting a 3:1 vote in favor of removal.

[severe birch]

Upcoming Class Tuning Hotfixes on Live Servers
https://www.wowhead.com/news/season-2-class-tuning-incoming-april-15th-376332

[severe birch]

Patch 11.1.5 Launch Info
This is a minor patch, with just a few new things to be aware of:

• Wrecking Throw received an unannounced 500% damage increase (on top of the +500% damage done to shields), turning it into a real button again. Mostly relevant in PvP, it may have more use in PvE (Gallywix) now as well, though it still comes at the cost of two talent points for an ability you may only use once per encounter. It's also a decent ranged filler, though on a long cooldown.

• Warbreaker's animation changed again, removing the phantom weapons.

• Recklessness & Avatar now clear when raid combat starts, so be careful using them before Charge. Just make sure to start your opener immediately after someone else pulls. this has been reverted, though you still want to be careful to charge after combat starts in order to maxmize rage.

• The first event of 11.1.5, Nightfall, is mostly cosmetic and catch-up gear.

• Corruption helm enchants will add ~2-3% damage, but aren't available until May 20th, so don't worry about them right now.

• Dinar have been confirmed with several new mechanics. A max of two items will be purchasable, the first on May 27th and the second on June 17th.

[severe birch]

Surprise Arms Warrior Hotfix - No More Parry?!

• Colossus Smash can no longer be parried. 🎉
• Unfortunately, Warbreaker still can.
  That said, Arms rarely uses Warbreaker in raid and usually cannot be parried in keys, so this is still a pretty good win.

[severe birch]

How Good is Blizzard's New Rotation Helper in 11.1.7?
First and foremost, there are two versions of this system coming in 11.1.7.

• Assisted Combat is Hekili-lite, recommending which abilities you should press, but you still have to press them yourself.
• Single-Button uses the same rotation, while automatically cycling through actions using a single keybind, with an extra 0.3s penalty on every GCD.

Aimed at less experienced players, Blizzard's rotations aren't particularly min/maxed; largely made up of simple unconditional actions (Rampage > Raging Blow > Bloodthirst), but Arms and Fury are also very straightforward, so this isn't as big a loss as it would be for some classes. There are a few misoptimizations and the GCD penalty affects high-haste specs like Fury a lot more than others, but it's a good starting point, with a few limitations:

• it only recommends on-GCD offensive abilities, from Bloodthirst to Bladestorm
• off-GCD offensive cooldowns, defensive, mobility, and utility abilities all still need to be used manually
• it doesn't try to hold big abilities like CS/Ravager for burst windows, target swaps, or fresh pulls, so there are some obvious points of failure in higher-end content

Overall, the Assisted Combat option is pretty decent. Taking a roughly 5% loss in exchange for a much simpler rotation is exactly what newer players should be doing, rather than trying to learn and perfectly Execute an overly min/maxed rotation at the same time. Meanwhile, the Single-Button option clearly falls behind, but even getting 75% of your rotation by (mostly) holding one button is pretty good. I played it through some mid-level Delves and it performed adequately enough, which is great for people who need it, though you're unlikely to lose any raid spots over it.

[severe birch]

Slayer Tuning on the Weekly Reset

• Bladestorm damage increased by 30%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
• Slayer: Reap the Storm damage increased by 30%. Does not apply to PvP combat.

~1.7% single target increase and ~5% in sustained multitargetbuff, this won't make Bladestorm better for Colossus/Thane, but is a nice buff to underperforming Slayer builds. Will be live this coming Tuesday, May 6th.

• No changes for Fury, but there's a new Slayer build in #1273899844599283733 for anyone tired of Colossus.

[severe birch]

Turbo Boost is now Live

• Crests are uncapped and Valor is warband xferable.
• All Heroic and Myth-track gear has two new upgrade ranks.
• Crafted gear can be recrafted with a new reagent to add up to +6 ilevels.
• Get your first three dinar by completing the new weekly raid quest allowing you to buy one item; subsequent weeks award one each, meaning you can buy an item this week, June 3rd, and June 24th.

Dinar Purchase Priority

• Best-in-Slots (Myth-only) - Heroic isn't worth buying, just use a Myth or crafted weapon instead.
• Jastor Diamond - even on Heroic, the Myth version is only a small increase.
• Trinket of choice - House of Cards is a good universal pick, Seaforium Pacemaker is a strong M+ option, Eye of Kezan is good for raid (though fights will get shorter over time), and Mister Lock-n-Stalk or another Mythic+ trinket are good secondaries - just pick what you need.
• Capital Punisher (Myth, Fury-only) - best offhand, but not rare so if you've killed M Gally, you can probably loot this naturally.

[severe birch]

Corrupted Helmet Enchants are Now Available
Helmet enchants can now be obtained by running Horrific Visions. They are relatively cheap, and because no key is required, the Visions can be infinitely farmed.

• It appears that only Lesser enchants are available this week, with Greater likely unlocking next week.
• There's no difference in comparing Lesser or Greater versions, aside from the obvious cost/power.
• The enchants do not scale with item level, as the enchants will deactivate in Season 3.

All specs will probably use Void Ritual for all content, as it pulls further ahead with more targets, though Echoing does go off more frequently, giving it a better chance of hitting a specific group of enemies.

[severe birch]

AoE Buffs on the Weekly Reset
Will be live on May 27th, and should be a roughly 5% increase to Mountain Thane in Mythic+.

• Arms Whirlwind damage increased by 100%.
• Fury Whirlwind damage increased by 120%.
• Odyn’s Fury damage increased by 30%.
• Thunder Clap damage increased by 25%.
• Mountain Thane: Thunder Blast damage increased by 25%.
• Execute damage reduced by 15% in PvP combat.
• Rend damage increased by 15% in PvP combat.

Odyn's Fury may be worth considering in place of Vicious Contempt now, losing a ~1.5% single target damage in exchange for 1-1.5% in multitarget.

[severe birch]

Fury Buffs Live & Mountain Thane Still Bugged
The AoE buffs are now live, and the recent Seismic Reverberation bug has not been fixed, resulting in an overall buff in Mountain Thane performance.

• Some of yall may have also recently heard about a bug inflating Fury's damage, and it is true - since 11.1.5, Seismic Reverberation has caused Thunder Clap/Blast to echo for 70% damage instead of 30%, inflating overall performance by ~4-5% damage in multitarget. This was discovered about a week and a half ago, becoming more public after the buffs were announced.
• Considering that the +25% Thunder Clap/Blast damage buff this week is also worth ~4-5% damage, it is strongly suspected that the buff is meant to compensate for an eventual bug fix, while also providing a small bonus vs 1-2 targets.

The bug has not yet been fixed, which means Thane is stronger than it was last week, though it is very likely to be fixed sooner rather than later. Once it is fixed, just pretend TC/Blast were buffed in 11.1.5 and it all works out about the same.

[severe birch]

Should Mug'z adds and One-Armed Bandit be Removed from All-Stars?
Warcraft Logs has created a new poll with two rankings questions for Patch 11.1.7.

• Should One-Armed Bandit should be removed from All-Stars rankings to counterbalance groups intentionally spawning additional sets of Dynamite Booty.
• Should Shocker adds on Mug'zee be excluded from rankings?

Personally I'm somewhat undecided on Bandit, but do not believe Mug'zee adds need to be removed, since they're static rather than repeatedly spawnable. Visit the Warcraft Logs homepage to vote how you see fit before the poll closes next week.

[severe birch]

Second Dinar Purchase This Week
Assuming you didn't miss completing and turning in any quests, you should earn your 6th Puzzling Cartel Chip (dinar) this week, allowing a second purchase. Refer back to this announcement or any of the guides for purchase priority.

[severe birch]

Warcraft Logs has updated their Bandit & Mug'zee Polls
After further discussion, Warcraft Logs is reevaluating their previous poll with new options for All-Stars and add removal on The One-Armed Bandit and Mug'zee. Vote on the Warcraft Logs homepage before the new poll closes in roughly a week.

[severe birch]

Warrior Class Mid-Expansion Retrospectives are all Live
Read, discuss, and enjoy.

• Arms
• Fury
• Protection

[severe birch]

New Titan DISC Belt in 11.1.7
The Durable Information Securing Container, aka Titan DISC Belt becomes available tomorrow after the weekly reset. It comes with a built-in socket and is already Best-in-Slot starting at 691 ilvl, increasing to 701 over time.

• Complete the Overcharged Delve questline by clearing two Overcharged Delves on any level. You do not need to fill out the Delve skill tree unless you want the shield power
• Other powers are deterministically obtained from completing various Delves of any level and can be freely changed while out of combat. The ones we care about are Charged Bolts (ST), Electric Current (oscilating Mastery), & Critical Chain (stacking Crit).

Guides are already updated, though keep in mind that things can and probably will change unexpectedly.

[severe birch]

Patch 11.2 Tier Sets are Hero Talent Based
This gives each spec an option between two sets of bonuses, instead of just one, and hopefully allows Blizzard to better tune each hero individually

• Preview Colossus bonuses (for Arms & Protection) below

Read more: https://www.wowhead.com/news/hero-talent-tier-sets-coming-in-season-3-choose-between-two-options-per-spec-377250
There's a lot more Patch 11.2 info coming very soon, so stay tuned to your favorite news outlet!

[severe birch]

Patch 11.2 Tier Set Effects
Remember that tier sets are based on Hero Talents now, not Specialization.

• Colossus 2p - Demolish damage increased by 20% and critical strike damage of your abilities is increased by up to 20% on targets affected by your Demolish for 10 sec based on the number of stacks of Colossal Might consumed.

• Colossus 4p - Demolish increases the critical strike chance of your next 2 Mortal Strikes/Shield Slams by 100%. Mortal Strike/Shield Slam critical strikes increase your Rend and Deep Wounds damage by 100% for 8 seconds.

• Mountain Thane 2p - Thunder Blast has a 35% chance to call down 5 Ionizing Strikes on affected targets. Each strike deals (20.68% of Attack power) Nature damage.

• Mountain Thane 4p - Ionizing Strikes deal 50% more damage and have a 20% chance to grant a charge of Thunder Blast.

• Slayer 2p - Execute damage increased by 20% and Executes from Sudden Death have a 10% chance per stack of Overwhelmed on the target to trigger a Slayer's Strike at 100% effectiveness.

• Slayer 4p - Raging Blow/Overpower damage increased by 20% and Raging Blow/Overpower has a 2% chance per stack of Overwhelmed on the target to trigger Reap the Storm at 100% effectiveness.

[severe birch]

Lots of Protection Changes on Patch 11.2 PTR
Not gonna repost them all here, since short on time - just check the newspost. Note that the talents with their position changed are for Protection, not Arms / Fury.

Other changes

• Battle Shout no longer has a cooldown, but is still on the GCD, for all specs.
• Hamstring now has a 0.75s GCD.
• Berserker Rage can no longer remove Scatter Shot.

https://www.wowhead.com/news/patch-11-2-ptr-datamined-class-changes-build-61476-protection-warrior-and-hunter-377342

[severe birch]

Titan DISC Belt Updates on Next Weekly Reset
Now we can go from never taking off Charged Bolts to never taking off Critical Chain instead!

• https://www.wowhead.com/news/charged-bolt-nerfed-by-massive-62-on-weekly-reset-upcoming-d-i-s-c-belt-tuning-377383

[severe birch]

How Good are Hero Talent Tier Sets in Season 3?
Warrior tier set editorials are now available on Wowhead, reviewing how good (or bad) the new hero specialization focused set bonuses are for Arms, Fury, and Protection!
Spoiler: ||Thane sucks, but Colossus & Slayer are goated.||

https://www.wowhead.com/news/how-good-are-the-warrior-hero-talent-tier-sets-in-the-war-within-season-3-377499

[severe birch]

Demolish No Longer Cancels in Patch 11.2
You can still miss targets that are quickly pulled out of range, but the attack itself will no longer cancel, making it much more reliable in group combat.

Developers’ notes: Demolish’s single-target attacks will still only hit the target if it is in melee range, and the final AOE attack will impact no more than 5 yards from the Warrior.```

[severe birch]

Now you can do stuff like this

[severe birch]

Season 3 Warrior Tier Set Tuning in Patch 11.2
Somewhat expectedly, the Warrior tier sets have been adjusted.

• Slayer 2p - Execute damage buffed by 10% (was 20%).
• Colossus 4p - Now only triggers 1 stack of Critical Conclusion (was 2).
• Mountain Thane 2p - Ionizing Strike damage increased by 725% (this is a buff).
• Mountain Thane 4p - increases Ionizing Strike damage by 100% (was 50%).

Bonus Protection Warrior change:

• Spellbreaker now has an 8% chance to affect a magic damage event, but reduces damage taken by 50% (was 4% @ 100% reduction).

Bonus bonus change:

• Mystic Touch (Monk debuff) now increases physical damage taken by 8% (up from 5%).

[severe birch]

Season 3 Tier Set Numbers - Post Nerf
Overall very minor and even justified nerfs considering how obscene the tier set bonuses were compared to last week's build. They are still very strong and will be a noticeable gain over Season 2 tier.

• Colossus change is completely inconsequential, since the guaranteed crit is just a vehicle for the bleed buff. Good news is no more concern over Ravager/Sweeping Strikes/etc eating stacks.
• Slayer's nerf is minor, but it may result in reverting back to holding for 3 marks and gaming Juggernaut, instead of just sending at 1 stack; this is still TBD.
• Thane's tier gains a lot of single target, which is arguably where it needs the most help, but the hero is still woefully behind in multitarget. It also appears that the Seismic Reverb bug has been fixed on the PTR, which means Thane's multitarget performance will fall even further.
  These numbers do not include the Mystic Touch buff.

[severe birch]

Season 3 Class & Tier Tuning on Patch 11.2 PTR

• Colossus 2p Bleed damage reduced to +80% (down from +100%).
• Slayer 4p Overpower/Raging Blow damage reduced to +10% (down from +20%), but now triggers Reap the Storm at 150% effectiveness (up from 100%, e.g. a 50% stronger Reap).
• Mountain Thane 4p redesigned - Ionizing Strike damage still increased by 100%, but also now always grant a charge of Thunder Blast and causes it to deal +100% increased damage. Although not stated in the tooltip, the 4p proc also resets the cooldown of Thunder Blast, allowing for chain procs.
• Fueled by Violence healing reduced to 150% of damage dealt (down from 200%) for Protection Warriors.

Overall the changes are a moderate nerf to Colossus, basically neutral for Slayer, and a huge buff for Thane.

[severe birch]

Bladestorm and other Multitarget buffs on the PTR

• Bladestorm damage increased by 15%.

• Whirlwind damage increased by 10%.

• Improved Whirlwind causes your single-target attacks to deal 65% damage to up to 4 nearby targets (was 55%).

• Developers’ notes: Fury has been struggling to keep up in sustained AOE combat. These changes are aimed at bolstering Fury in these situations.

• Monk buff is also being reverted back to 5%.

[severe birch]

New Build, New Warrior Buffs!

• All Arms and Fury ability damage increased by 5%.

[severe birch]

Official Patch 11.2 Dev Notes Are Up
If you've been keeping up, there's nothing unexpected. Keep in mind, there will almost certainly be further pre- and post-release hotfixes, so this doesn't really mean a whole lot.

Resources and Guides will be updated this weekend, with seasonal content being added over the following week. Short version:

• Fury Slayer looks to be fairly average in raid, though its multitarget will likely carry on some fights. Thane looks to be very strong in Mythic+, if still probably not strictly meta.
• Arms Slayer appears significantly behind Fury, while Colossus is fairly close to Thane in Mythic+ though noticeably lacking single target.
• Protection ranges from Thane being simply overpowered and very likely to catch a nerf at some point, to Colossus lagging considerably behind.

https://www.wowhead.com/news/patch-11-2-ghosts-of-karesh-official-patch-notes-377966

[severe birch]

Patch 11.2 Guide, Resource, & FAQ Updates
Patch 11.2 is now live. Guides found in the #dps-faq and #protection-faq are now (mostly) updated for Patch 11.2, alongside various other community resources.

• SimulationCraft/Raidbots has been updated for Season 3 tier.
• Arms & Fury Rotation pages have been updated, but they also aren't relevant until obtaining new Season 3 set bonuses. Protection pages have also been updated to account for the patch talent changes.
• Quick access builds and other information will be updated over the following week, in preparation for the launch of Season 3.

Remember, there are no important talent/gear/rotation changes for Arms/Fury until acquiring the Season 3 set bonus, but there's not a whole lot of competitive content until then either, so in the meantime just enjoy the open world content, get your artifact, and farm some easy M0s.

[severe birch]

Season 3 Pre-Raid Tuning

• Mountain Thane Season 3 tier set Ionizing Strikes deal 30% less damage for Protection Warriors, which amounts to a very minor single target nerf.
• No changes for Arms or Fury.

[severe birch]

Servers are Up
And it looks like people are actually getting in now.

• Guides are all updated, still no actual gameplay changes until you get S3 tier (all specs prioritize it asap)
• #dps-faq is half updated, will get it more fleshed out over the week
• Arms and Fury Sudden Death WeakAuras have been updated, but you don't need the new versions until you get tier. The Bloodthirst Crit WA is no longer used w/ Season 3 gear.

Don't craft anything this week unless you're very certain what spec you're playing and loot you're getting. Unless you're in the RWF:

• Fury will probably want to wait and craft an Ascendance weapon next week (recraft your S2 bracer to Writhing until you can craft a new one).
• Arms will eventually want Duskthread Bracer & Belt, but starting with weapon and swapping later is also a good idea unless you get an early Myth weapon

Post-buff Dimensius trinket is extremely strong now btw.

[severe birch]

Upcoming Tuning on Next Weekly Reset

• All Arms Warrior damage increased by 8% (not in PvP).

Still going to be worse than Fury in raid, but Colossus is awfully competitive for raw AoE damage in M+. Amazing that we didn't even need to cry about it either!

[severe birch]

DPS FAQ Fully Updated for Season 3
Little bit of delay here, but the #dps-faq should now be fully updated for Season 3.

• As a reminder, this is meant to be more of a quick reference sheet, rather than a replacement for the (already updated) full guides.

There's also been a lot of questions about whether post-buff Arms is better than Fury:

• Fury is generally better in raid. Though Arms is now very close in single target (~3%), this may not translate well on all fights.
• Arms has slightly better overall multitarget damage potential than Thane in large M+ pulls, though it also has noticeably worse boss damage. They're all quite comfortable in M+ this season, so either base it off your comp or just pick your favorite poison.

Most AoE <--- Colossus <--- Thane ---> F. Slayer ---> Most ST

[severe birch]

New Crafting Week
This is the third full spark of Season 3, which means players that crafted weapons will be able to (re)craft their Writhing Band embellishment, probably on bracers.

• If you're upgrading a Season 2 piece to Season 3 item levels, remember that you will lose the socket, so adjust your gems accordingly.
• Bracers aren't a high budget slot, so unless you don't have anything else worth spending Gilded Crests on, its not a bad idea to (re)craft your Writhing embellished bracers to 704/Runed/Heroic instead of maxing it out right away. If you're still using Runed upgrades, remember that you get a free Enchanted Runed Ethereal Crest from defeating Dimensius at the end of the campaign, which is easy to do in LFR or Story Mode.
• If you didn't craft a weapon first and already have two Season 3 embellished pieces, then this doesn't apply; just use the spark to fill in any holes in your gear - neck/rings are usually good choices.

[severe birch]

Unannounced 4p Slayer Reap Change - Now Chance per Target Hit
The 4p tier set bonus, which allows Reap the Storm to be triggered by Raging Blow & Overpower, now has a chance to trigger for each target hit, rather than once per cast. This means that the previous 20% chance to proc now goes up to a 67% chance when hitting 5 targets (with Overwhelmed fully stacked up on each).

• Bloodthirst always operated this way, though Raging Blow and Overpower previously had just one chance to proc with each cast, which is why Fury still prioritized Bloodthirst in Mythic+.
• Sims will be updated this evening/tomorrow, but the main gameplay change in the meantime is that Fury should always prioritize Raging Blow instead of Bloodthirst when the Overwhelmed debuff (applied by Bladestorm) is active. Not much change for Arms, since Overpower is already being prioritized, but you will see more Reap procs during Sweeping Strikes.

[severe birch]

New Slayer Numbers
With yesterday's unannounced hotfix, Slayer now prioritizes Raging Blow over Bloodthirst in multitarget, coming out ~10% higher compared to last week.

• This puts it ~4-5% ahead of Thane and Colossus at 5-6 targets, though this condenses and turns back the other way at higher target counts.
• Thane and Colossus multitarget burst is still ~10-20% higher than Slayer, though this is offset by Slayer's 10-20% higher single target. Overall difference will be dictated by pull size and length.
• Odyn's Fury is also now more competitive, but largely preferential, trading ~1-3% single target for a similar amount of multitarget. Although it doesn't contribute very much damage, neither do the Bloodthirst talents its replacing, so just use it as a better Whirlwind whenever the buff needs to be refreshed.
• Nothing changes for Arms; it gains some increased 2+ target damage, but Overpower was already being prioritized anyway.

Raidbots is now fully updated with the changes.
Wowhead, Icy-Veins, and #1273899855852339200 found in the #dps-faq have also been updated.

[severe birch]

New Weekly Class Tuning
Blizzard has finally released some post-race class tuning coming with the weekly reset!

• All Arms Warrior damage increased by 4% in PvP combat.

[severe birch]

New Parsing Polls on WarcraftLogs
WarcraftLogs has released new polls related to parsing Soulbinder and Forgeweaver in Manaforge Omega.

• The main concern with these fights is the potential for some specs to "snipe" add damage, as the massive amount of power inflation coming with Turbo Boost will cause them to die before sustained dps specs (like Fury) are able to deal much damage.
• Removing the adds obviously trends more toward single target parsing, though it also causes players to treat them more like single target encounters, not bothering to waste damage potential on adds that still need to be killed.

Make sure to vote on WarcraftLogs before polls close within the next week.

[severe birch]

Turbo Boosting with Efficiency!
Sorry for the late reminder, but remember that while Turbo Boost arrives next week on Oct 7th, Crests are not uncapped until the 21st. This means that it may be worth not spending on any minor upgrades this week, and instead saving your crests to upgrade more higher budget items (weapon, trinket, chest, etc) to 8/8 Mythic next week instead.

https://www.wowhead.com/guide/the-war-within/turbo-boost-dinar-event-overview

[severe birch]

Major Midnight Alpha Reworks
Our first preview of the Midnight Alpha is now available, including completely reworked Warrior Class, Arms, Fury, and Protection talent trees! Although Apex and new Hero talents are not yet implemented, there are still far too many changes to list out here, so check out the mock trees that were painstakingly transcribed by hand on Wowhead.

Main highlights

• New utility: Piercing Howl and Rallying Cry both increase allied movement speed by 30%, similar to Wind Rush. Intimidating Shout no longer has a target cap and now disorients instead of fears. Interpose allows you to charge toward allies and redirect damage taken (like a weaker ground targeted Blessing of Sacrifice).
• Many talents removed: including Torments, Thunderous Roar, Test of Might, In for the Kill, Skullsplitter, Martial Prowess, Juggernaut, Ravager, Slaughtering Strikes, Unhinged, Onslaught, Titanic Rage, and Single-Minded Fury are gone. A new passive allowing Fury to transmog 2hr -> 1h was previewed, but is not yet implemented.
• Several new and adjusted talents: emphasizing Arms' Slam, Fury Execute, Bloodthirst crits, and more. Anger Management no longer affects Bladestorm and is in the class tree, while Avatar is now in the spec trees. Frenzy now works like Ironfur (which is both good and bad), while Fury Bladestorm has been heavily nerfed and is now on a choice node with Odyn's Fury for reasons surpassing understanding. Arms has a new mastery that passively increases damage dealt without depending on Deep Wounds. All three specs now apply Deep Wounds with Execute, and all three specs have access to Rend in the class tree (though it's unclear whether Slayer Fury will actually use it). Unfortunately many other T3 talents are atrocious (nerfed Spear, Wrecking Throw, Sidearm?!).
• PvP-focused survivability: Kill or be Killed in the Fury tree replicates the Legion artifact perk with a flavorful though unreliable pseudo-cheat death. Last Stand in the class tree also auto-heals 30% health upon going below 20%, though it does not prevent being killed outright. Fun flavor, but they're both pretty underwhelming in PvE.

I already have a mountain of feedback too long to post here, but the main takeaway is that there are a lot of really cool individual talent ideas, but all three tree layouts are really rough, making it hard to create varied builds at the moment (though if you remember DF/TWW Alpha, this isn't unexpected).

• For example, there's an interesting concept for a Fury Slayer build which focuses on Raging Blow and only casts Bloodthirst on crit to trigger several supplementary effects, but you can't get those talents without also spending extra points pathing through talents buffing Bloodthirst damage, which you don't want.
• There are still a lot of already existing and brand new talents that are very weawk too, either in effect or value, some of which are difficult/impossible to path around. 20% increased Shout duration sounds nice, but on a practical level, that's +2 seconds on Rally and +0.8s longer PHowl.
• Cooldowns have been paired down significantly, perhaps even to the point of overcorrection. Bladestorm and Recklessness are both nerfed, Avatar is extremely lackluster without Torments, and Odyn's Fury can't even be used by Slayer - in effect, we went from having several mediocre cooldowns to just a couple really bad ones. Warbreaker has been baked into Colossus Smash though, so that's nice.
• Fury rage generation has been noticeably slowed down, and Arms' rotation is BM levels of boring, but there is at least a decent framework to build on, that upcoming Apex/Hero talents are likely to expand.

TL;DR - lots of new talents, some simplification, a few very interesting concepts, but really rough tree layouts. Here's a sample single target Slayer setup that I've been toying with.

[severe birch]

Midnight Alpha Class Patch Notes
Blizzard has released full patch notes listing all of the class changes, alongside some dev commentary.

• Developers’ notes: Since Dragonflight, all three Warrior specs have been overloaded with cooldowns most of which come from the Class tree. The Warrior class tree is also focused far more on damage-dealing and survival than offering interesting choices and new utility Warriors can bring to groups. We’re taking a fresh look at the Warrior class tree in Midnight and looking to make the tree more interesting with more unique effects that Warriors can bring to content.
• Developers’ notes: Much of Arms’ damage has from aligning damage increase and high damage cooldowns together, and the loss of damage from not doing this correctly every time can be very high. We’re keeping focus on Colossus Smash as Arms’ most important damage cooldown, and adding some new talents to customize it for different fights. We’ve also removed some of Arms’ modifiers to the next use of an ability, such as Martial Prowess, to make it less complex to determine the best rotational ability to use. Finally, we’re improving Sweeping Strikes to keep Arms’ solidly in place as a champion of two-target cleave damage.
• Developers’ notes: In Midnight our goal is to refine Fury’s core builder/spender gameplay and resolve some pain points. We’ve added some powerful Execute talents to make conditions about when to use Sudden Death less complex for players who enjoy it. We’ve added some bonuses to make Critical Strike a more appealing stats for Fury Warriors and added some new AOE talent options. We’re also reinforcing Bloodthirst to make it a reliably satisfying button to press and create a rhythm to Fury’s rotation. Lastly, we’re simplifying some of the rotation conditions involving Enrage and major cooldowns like Bladestorm.
• Developers’ notes: We’re pleased that the major spec work Protection received in Ghosts of K’aresh has been successful, so we’re comfortable letting things settle a bit more. Most of the changes Protection has received are due to several talents moving to the Warrior class tree work. In Midnight, we’re positioning Thunder Clap to be the primary AOE threat tool, and focusing Revenge towards dealing additional damage with your excess Rage. To that end, Revenge has been changed to allow the Warrior to choose which version best suits their needs and content, and to allow us to better tune it for different content types.

https://www.wowhead.com/news/midnight-alpha-development-notes-378688

Moving forward, please refer to the #old-updates-midnight-beta and other Alpha/Beta discussion channels for Midnight content

[severe birch]

Patch 11.2.5 and Turbo Boost is now Live
Adding two new ranks to the Heroic and Myth upgrade tracks. Remember crests aren't uncapped yet, so plan your upgrades accordingly!

• For you high end Fury Warriors out there, you can save 15 crests by upgrading your crafted offhand from 720 -> 727, and then upgrading your main hand to 727 for free, before continuing to 730. This will cost a total of 45 crests to max both weapons, instead of 60 crests doing it the other way around!
• The Reshii Wraps (cloak) are displaying some red error text, but still appear to be working just fine.
• Only purchase and use one Starlight Matrix (crafted ilvl boost item) at a time, there is apparently a bug where multiple can be taken from your bags.

[severe birch]

Upgraded Crafted Gear is Sort of Bugged (but also not really)
There seems to be a bug affecting newly upgraded crafted gear, which causes them to act as though their item level/stats are significantly lower than intended. However, this bug only appears in Dornogal and is fixed everywhere else, so just don't do any duels in town for awhile.

Update: The bug was actually a lot more invasive, potentially resulting in some really odd behavior, but now appears to be completely fixed.

[severe birch]

Turbo Boost Dinar and Uncapped Crests Now Live
You get 3 dinar this week, allowing you to purchase one item immediately, then every 3 weeks after. Purchase priority is pretty straightforward since there aren't too many cantrips, the vendor offers all trinkets, special effect items, and weapons from M+ and raid.

LFR bosses do not count for quest completion.
Myth Dungeon gear requires completing that specific dungeon on +12.

• Boots if you don't have/aren't likely to get them.
• Screams of a Forgotten Sky > Eradicating Arcanocore ~= Ticking Sack for raid.
• Stone Idol > Sacbrood ~= Pacemaker for M+.
• Antenna can fill as secondary trinket for either raid or M+ if you wanna bother with the movement.
• Band of Shattered Soul is ok, but mostly a defensive option.

[severe birch]

Midnight Changeover
Midnight is upon us, which means the regular specialization channels are now changing over to the live/pre-patch version of the game. Beta channels may still be used for Beta-specific discussion, but we'd like to keep live discussion in the normal #arms, #fury, and #protection channels.

• Guides have been updated for Midnight with new talent builds, rotations, and the like. Keep in mind that Pre-Patch is still [missing some Beta changes](#old-updates-midnight-beta message), which are expected to be merged in a few weeks, at which point practically every build and rotation will change again.
• Discord tools, FAQ, etc will update over time.
• Raidbots is in the process of updating, but will also change over once servers go live. Remember that SimC updates are ongoing, with a focus on L90 content, so expect frequent updates over the coming weeks.
• Arms Mastery is currently bugged and not working at all in pre-patch sims, which will affect overall output and gear - general stat/gearing recommendations haven't changed, so just be aware that anything with mastery will look worse than it actually is.

I want to be clear that Pre-Patch optimization is very limited, due to unearned talent points preventing us from making complete builds, Apex talents not yet being available, and unmerged Beta changes severely handicapping some playstyles. Our focus is on preparing sims and guides for Level 90, so take the pre-patch with a grain of salt and just enjoy it for what it is - a time to experiment with new features.

Now for the thing yall actually care about, talent builds!

• Fury Slayer* > Thane >> Arms Slayer > Colossus for single target/raid
• Thane > Colossus >> Arms Slayer >> Fury Slayer in Mythic+
  Fury Slayer is using Avatar instead of Bladestorm, because reasons

[severe birch]

Defensive Stance Tracker
Thanks to @fresh field's stealing code hard work, we have a new addon to track Defensive Stance!

• there's limited customization
• Battle Stance is shown as Prot
• no, it doesn't work for regular buffs
  https://addons.wago.io/addons/defensive-stance-reminder

[severe birch]

Patch 12.0.1 Goes Live Today
This includes all of the [remaining beta changes](#old-updates-midnight-beta message), such as Sudden Death-Reap, Battlelord rage, and general tuning.

More importantly, the Class Tree talent gates have changed to now require spending 23 points before unlocking the third row of talents. This means you will only have 8 points left to spend at the bottom of the tree at level 80, instead of the usual 11.

• This will be restored by the time you reach level 90, but the class tree of every build needs to be remade to accommodate it in the meantime; you can find recommendations on the Wowhead talent calculator and Icy-Veins talent guides.

Raidbots, guides, and other resources already are or will be updated by the time the patch goes live, though I want to be very clear that this is an unusual two-week period with unique limitations that we're not going out of our way to min/max. Our efforts remain focused on preparing for Midnight Season 1, so just experiment and have fun with it.

[severe birch]

Upcoming Tuning on Feb 17
More nerfs coming with the weekly reset on live servers!

Arms

• Overpowering Finish bonus damage to Overpower reduced to 15% (was 25%).
• Mass Execution bonus damage to Cleave reduced to 20% (was 25%).
• Demolish (Colossus) AoE damage reduced by 20%.
• Cut to the Bone (Colossus) Rend and Deep Wounds bonus reduced to 15% (was 25%).
• All damage increased by 15% in PvP combat.
• Slam damage reduced by 60% in PvP combat.
  Fury
• Slayer: Reap the Storm chance to trigger reduced to 30% (was 35%).
  Protection
• Execute damage increased by 20%
• Demolish (Colossus) AOE damage reduced by 20%.
• Cut to the Bone (Colossus) bonus damage to Rend and Deep Wounds reduced to 15% (was 25%).

[severe birch]

Midnight Early Access is Now Live
As usual, all of our #1237307777677004854 and #dps-faq guides have been updated. As usual, some parts may not be entirely relevant yet since most things won't be available until Season 1 formally starts on March 17th. There's not a whole lot of point in min/maxing normal dungeon gear farm, so just go level up, ruin the economy, and enjoy 3/4 of your new apex talents... unless you don't have early access, in which case we'll see you in a few days
-# look, if you're a broke boy just say so

Also another huge shout out to our @fallen coyote, @spiral vault, and @little ice for their continued work in overoptimizing action lists to prove exactly how undertuned Arms is right now.

[severe birch]

Midnight Macro Mischief
Now that you've had a chance to level up and play with the new toys, here are a few tricks to make the most of Midnight.

For Fury, Improved Whirlwind can currently be cancelled, which means Rampaging Ruin can be used effectively even as Thane. Just keep one normal Rampage keybind for hitting multiple targets, and use this macro purely for single targets. Note that this is a bug though, and will be fixed eventually. #showtooltip Rampage /cancelaura Whirlwind /use Rampage
For Arms, if you've unlocked the Apex, but you're still allergic to the idea of pressing Slam, use this macro to turn any ability into Heroic Strike on proc! #showtooltip /use [known:Heroic Strike] Heroic Strike; Mortal Strike

[severe birch]

Save Your Craft - First Two Sparks Available
You can get two Sparks of Radiance this week from completing the Midnight World Tour and Unity Against the Void (hint: do the Arcantina quest), allowing your first crafted item in Midnight, but it is highly recommended to save this craft until Season 1 starts unless you really, really know what you're doing early in the Season.

• Fury Warriors will probably want to craft a weapon first (now requiring four sparks, so it should be available on the first week of Season 1) to discount their off-hand upgrades.
• Arms still TBD; weapon isn't bad for players who are worried about having access to Myth track early though.
• Ultimately, cloak/bracers will be best for maximizing stats.

[severe birch]

Fury Rotation has been Updated
In both SimulationCraft (Raidbots) and guides, the average number of rotational steps has been reduced from ~40 to ~18, greatly simplifying the rotational priority to make it more comparable to Arms and easier to play without complicated tracking addons that are no longer available. Default consumables have also been updated for all three specializations.

• sim performance has generally increased by a very small amount, with Thane's performance at abnormally high target counts increasing by almost 3%.
• player performance should also go up, as the rotation should be easier to follow and result in less mistakes.
  Wowhead guides will also be testing a new format separating rotational phases, while Icy-Veins will continue to show a single consolidated list for those who prefer it.

[severe birch]

Patch 12.0.5 PTR Dev Notes Include Questionable Warrior Changes
Inc Whirlwind spam I guess?
https://www.wowhead.com/news/patch-12-0-5-ptr-development-notes-class-updates-housing-and-more-380752

Arms

• Mortal Wounds now triggers from Mortal Strike and Slam (was Mortal Strike and Cleave).
• (Colossus) Practiced Strikes now increases Mortal Strike and Slam damage by 15% and Cleave and Whirlwind damage by 15%.
  Slayer
• (Slayer) Reap the Storm now triggers when Whirlwind or Cleave hits 3 or more targets. Chance to trigger changed to 15% (was 20%).
• (Slayer) Imminent Demise no longer causes Sudden Death to trigger Reap the Storm.
• (Slayer) Unrelenting Onslaught now also increases damage dealt by Bladestorm by 20%.
  Fury
• Hack and Slash has been redesigned – Rampage has 100% chance to refund a charge of Raging Blow.
• Improved Whirlwind now causes Whirlwind to apply Rend to all targets if Rend is known.
• (Slayer) Reap the Storm now triggers when Whirlwind hits 3 or more targets. Chance to trigger changed to 15% (was 30%).
• (Slayer) Imminent Demise no longer causes Sudden Death to trigger Reap the Storm.
• (Slayer) Unrelenting Onslaught now increases damage dealt by Bladestorm by 20%.
  Protection
• (Colossus) Practiced Strikes now increases Shield Slam damage by 15% and Revenge and Thunder Clap damage by 15%.

Here's a feedback thread - please post responsibly.

[severe birch]

Master of Whatfare? Arms Warrior Issues with Apex Talents
For your reading pleasure, there's a new article discussing some of the issues with Arms Warriors in Midnight.

• Please note this was written before and does not assess the [controversial changes in Patch 12.0.5](#updates-midnight message) (there's already a feedback thread for that linked above) - this article is focused on problems we're dealing with right now in the live version of the game.

https://www.wowhead.com/news/master-of-whatfare-arms-warrior-issues-with-apex-talents-380741

[severe birch]

Midnight Season 1 Warrior Tuning
It's here

Class

• Piercing Howl's cooldown increased to 90 seconds (was 30 seconds), and ally speed buff radius reduced to 6 yards (12 with Battlefield Commander).
  Developers’ notes: Piercing Howl has been available more frequently than intended and does not align with other similar effects, so we're making changes to bring this ability in line while keeping it distinct among similar effects.

Arms

• Master of Warfare's final rank Heroic Strike now increases the damage you deal to enemies affected by your next - Colossus Smash by an additional 3%. Stacks up to 5 times.
• All damage dealt increased by 15%.

Fury

• All damage dealt increased by 10%.
• Slayer: Bloodthirst's chance for Reap the Storm to trigger changed to 20% (was 30%).

Protection

• Phalanx rank 1: Thunder Clap now causes your next Shield Slam deal 10% additional damage and unleash a wave of force, dealing Physical damage to all enemies in front of you.
• Phalanx rank 4: In addition to existing effects, enemies damaged by Phalanx's wave of force deal 5% reduced damage to you for 8 seconds.
• All damage dealt increased by 10%.
  Developers’ notes: These changes are aimed at redistributing the power of Protection Warrior's Apex talents to better align with our design goals for Apex talents.

PvP

• The duration of Intimidating Shout has been reduced to 5 seconds (was 6 seconds).
  Developer's Note: The duration of Intimidating Shout when talented into Resonant Voice surpassed our targets for PvP crowd control duration.
• Bladestorm damage no longer decreased by 23% in PvP combat.
• Slayer: Unhinged now casts Mortal Strike / Bloodthirst at 40% effectiveness (was 60%) in PvP combat.

Bit of a mix, but fairly positive overall Fury buffs are nice and the Reap nerf is fine since we can just continue to play Thane keys instead. +15% isn't enough to bring Arms out of the gutter, but the new effect on Apex 4 looks very promising - I'm guesstimating around 4%, which is very respectable for a single talent point.

[severe birch]

Master of Warfare 4 - Arms Apex Finally Gets Good
Although we do not have data yet, we've created a estimation of the [new Arms Warrior Apex talent](#updates-midnight message) coming on Tuesday! Yes, Arms is still in the trash, though its sustained AoE is actually quite respectable.

Coming out to ~3.5%, it's more than twice as powerful as most of the talents it would replace and should be used in all builds going forward.

• If anything, I feel like this is probably a little lower than actuality. We won't know for sure until we see how Blizzard decides to make it work, but this should represent a reasonable average performance.

[severe birch]

Midnight Season 1 is Now Live
The #dps-faq and all major guides have been fully updated for Midnight Season 1, so please read give them a read.

In addition to all the expected seasonal content, you should now have enough sparks to craft endgame gear. Some of these will be replaced down the road, but this is the best recommendation for general players starting off the tier - if you're a race raider planning 36 day 1 splits, then you already know what you're doing.

**First Craft for all specs - 259 Str Weapon with Hunt embellishment **

• Use this to get an early boost and recraft it using Myth crests next week. Arms Warriors will eventually replace it, so use your best judgement based on how much you intend to play Arms vs Fury, and how likely you think you are to get an early weapon elsewhere.

Second Craft for Arms/Fury - 246 Bracers with Arcanoweave

• Arms and Fury Warriors won't have enough sparks to make another epic item, but your second embellishment can be crafted onto a 246 Bracer using 80 Veteran Crests or 9 Galactic Gladiator's Heraldry (which can get an early socket if you can be bothered to PvP for it)

Second Craft for Protection - 259 Shield or Bracers with Arcanoweave

• Protection Warriors only spend two sparks on their weapon, so they can also make either a shield or bracers, depending on how likely they expect to get a shield from the first raid boss either this week or next.

[severe birch]

Delve Nemesis is Much Easier as Protection
But he's still not a complete pushover at this gear level. Play Thane and take tanky talents; it's a survivability fight more than a DPS race.

• Stay in DStance, keep up Block and IP as much as possible.
• Interrupt Emptiness of the Void.
• Spell Reflect Devouring Essence.
• Spam IP before Imploding Strike, heal up after.
• @ 75% just kill first set of adds normally. Stay out of purple poop.
• @ 50% make sure you have drums/pot/Avatar for second set of adds, and Shockwave them if you get to 5 stacks. Stay away from the orb floating around the room.
• @ 25% ignore third add, just focus boss and try not to die. He enrages, so make sure you're diligent about cycling cooldowns, especially if you're not topped off before Imploding Strike.

[severe birch]

No Class Tuning for Warriors Going into Mythic
Arms is doing way too well on one fight and apparently nerfing Cleave in exchange for an aura buff is just unthinkable.

https://www.wowhead.com/news/additional-midnight-class-tuning-incoming-march-24th-380891

[severe birch]

Emergency Arms Buffs
Must be my birthday or something. Overall comes out to ~6-7% in single target and ~4-5% in higher multitarget, which should at least make Arms more competitive with Fury.
https://www.wowhead.com/news/arms-warrior-buffs-and-guardian-druid-nerfs-more-last-minute-class-tuning-380923

Arms

• Mortal Strike damage increased by 12%.
• Execute damage increased by 15%.
• Cleave damage reduced by 10%.

[severe birch]

Updated Combat Potion
In order to avoid some odd and awkward Droptimizer/Top Gear results, I've updated the default combat potion for Arms and Fury to Light's Potential instead of Potion of Recklessness, and figured I'd give a little guidance.

Under the best circumstances, Potion of Recklessness is only a little stronger than Light's Potential (~200-400 DPS or 0.2-0.4%), but it requires carefully balanced secondary stats to ensure that Mastery is always the highest and Versatility is kept as close to zero as possible. This has three principle effects:

• Versatility's value drops hard, and avoiding it restricts the amount of desirable gear.
• Comparing gear is more difficult, with any change causing Haste/Mastery to flip having an exaggerated result.
• Light's Potential is better when using Vantus Runes anyway, since Reck Pot negates the extra Versatility.

That second point is arguably the most important: all that extra Mastery from the potion also causes the stat to reach diminishing returns sooner, so you're continually toeing a thin line of wanting more Haste and Crit, but not to the point that Mastery is no longer your highest secondary - leading to some very inconsistent and confusing gear comparisons for any piece causing them to change, as seen in the example Droptimizer below.

If you still want to use Reck Pot regardless, you can change the potion in Raidbots options. Personally though, I don't believe the gain is worth the hassle, at least until you've reached max item level and are just hunting down a few last sidegrades.

[severe birch]

PTR Warrior Changes
Building on the [last set of changes](#updates-midnight message), Blizzard has retained Sudden Death Reap procs by making them dependent on Improved Whirlwind/Sweeping Strikes, instead of just removing them completely (this is a great change, especially for Arms).

• Wrecking Throw will now be highlighted when the Warrior targets a unit with an active Absorb shield.
• Shattering Throw will now be highlighted when the Warrior targets a unit with an active Immunity effect, or a Mage’s Ice Wall.
  Arms
• Reap the Storm has been updated – When Cleave hits 3 or more targets via Improved Whirlwind you have a 15% chance to unleash a flurry of steel, striking all nearby enemies for high Physical damage and applying Overwhelmed.
• Imminent Demise has an additional effect – When Sudden Death strikes multiple targets via Sweeping Strikes, you have a 100% chance to trigger Reap the Storm.
  Fury
• Reap the Storm has been updated – When Rampage hits 3 or more targets via Improved Whirlwind you have a 15% chance to unleash a flurry of steel, striking all nearby enemies for high Physical damage and applying Overwhelmed.
• Imminent Demise has an additional effect – When Sudden Death strikes multiple targets via Improved Whirlwind, you have a 100% chance to trigger Reap the Storm.

For those who don’t know what to think, these are good changes: retaining Sudden Death value is extremely important for Arms, and while I’d prefer Mortal Strike/Bloodthirst triggers instead of Cleave/Rampage, either are better than Whirlwind spam. Overall, this is a solid compromise that keeps Reap value in AoE without corrupting the rotation, and creates room for single target Execute buffs.

[severe birch]

More Arms Tuning Coming with the Weekly Reset
Who would have guessed Arms' single target is a little low?!
https://www.wowhead.com/news/upcoming-midnight-class-tuning-for-march-31st-381003

Arms

• Execute damage increased by 20%. Does not affect PvP.
• Overpower damage increased by 10%. Does not affect PvP.
  Developers’ notes: Arms single target damage remains lower than intended, particularly Execute.

PvP Arms

• Battle Stance now reduces the duration of movement impairment effects by 25% in PvP Combat (was 10%) in PVP.
• Ignore Pain absorption increased by 20% in PVP .
  Developers’ notes: Arms can sometimes struggle to connect, so we’re making a change to Battle Stance to help with mobility against slow and root effects. Additionally, we’re increasing the power of Ignore Pain so that it feels more worthwhile to use when trying to survive.

PvP Fury

• Execute damage increased by 20% in PvP combat in PVP.
• Mountain Thane: Burst of Power now increases the damage of Bloodthirst by 15% (was 35%) in PVP.
  Developers’ notes: Damage is in a good state for Mountain Thane, but there is some potential for burst from Bloodthirst that we’re looking to reign in. We’re also increasing the damage from Execute to increase the viability of the Slayer hero talents.

[severe birch]

New Crafting Week & PvP Quest
If you previously crafted a two-handed weapon and have been following along with our #1237307555961634826 recommendations, this week should allow you to recraft your embellished bracer from 246 -> 256+.

• As far as we've seen, there is no free crafting crest from the campaign, so what item level you decide to craft it at should be based on how many crests you have available and expect to use. Myth crests are generally wasted on such a low level slot, but may be worth spending if you don't have enough Myth track gear to spend them on. Otherwise, consider investing hero or even just sticking with base spark level - remember that you can always recraft again later.

While you're here, make sure you also complete the multi-week PvP quest in Silvermoon, as it awards a Hero track Neck or Ring. The neck in particular is very well itemized for Fury, better than anything available from dungeons. You can complete the quests in brawls or training grounds, which are very quick and easy.

[severe birch]

More PTR Class Changes
Colossus/Slayer 📈, Thane 📉

• Rip Clap-spam during Avatar. The CDR change is fine, since it just creates more room to use Bloodthirst for more Blast procs and Avatar extension, but the direct damage nerf on top feels heavy handed.
• New weapon sheathing options have been added, including an option to hide weapons when sheathed.
  https://www.wowhead.com/news/patch-12-0-5-ptr-development-notes-for-march-31st-weapon-sheathing-transmog-and-381068

Class

• Rend radius increased to 10 yards (was 8 yards).

Arms

• Crushing Combo removes the cooldown from your next 2 uses of Cleave (was 3).
• Demolish’s area of effect strike radius increased to 10 yards (was 8 yards).
• Dominance of the Colossus reduces the cooldown of Demolish by 5 seconds when you would gain a stack of Colossal Might and are already at max stacks (was 2 seconds).
• Reap the Storm chance to trigger increased to 20%.

Fury

• Storm Surge causes Avatar to increase the damage of Thunder Clap by 10% (was 50%) and reduce its cooldown by 25% (was 50%).
• Reap the Storm chance to trigger increased to 20%.

Protection

• Demolish’s area of effect strike radius increased to 10 yards (was 8 yards).
• Dominance of the Colossus reduces the cooldown of Demolish by 5 seconds when you would gain a stack of Colossal Might and are already at max stacks (was 2 seconds).
• Storm Surge causes Avatar to increase the damage of Thunder Clap by 10% (was 50%) and reduce its cooldown by 25% (was 50%).

[severe birch]

Upcoming Live Tuning on the Weekly Reset
PvP Arms

• All damage increased by 3% in PvP combat.
• Rend damage increased by 15% in PvP combat.
• Deep Wounds damage increased by 100% in PvP combat.
• Colossus: Demolish damage reduced by 15% in PvP combat.
• Colossus: Celeritous Conclusion now causes the final strike from Demolish to increase the critical strike chance of your next Mortal Strike by 15% (was 100%).
  Developers’ notes: Our goal for Arms Warrior is to increase their overall damage as their consistent pressure has been lower than we would like. We’re also reducing the effectiveness of their Colossus burst window as its damage was condensed into too small of a time period.

PvE

[severe birch]

Storm Surge and Sudden Death Changes Reverted in Patch 12.0.5
Update: Both of these changes have now been officially confirmed.

Blizzard has pushed new hotfixes reverting two of the upcoming changes on the Patch 12.0.5 PTR!

• Storm Surge is back to +50% damage / -%50 cooldown for both Fury and Protection, meaning there are currently no changes for Mountain Thanes.
• Sudden Death no longer requires hitting a second target to trigger Reap the Storm.
• All other previously announced changes including [Mortal Wounds, Practiced Strikes](#updates-midnight message), [Cleave/Rampage Reap](#updates-midnight message), [Crushing Combo and Demolish cooldown](#updates-midnight message) adjustments are still in.

Overall, this is a net positive, but please keep in mind that these are unannounced hotfixes and therefore may not be finalized. I highly recommend waiting for final patch notes next week, or even just waiting to see what changes actually happen when the patch actually goes live in two weeks.

[severe birch]

Update Alerts
We've added a new option in id:customize for users to receive a ping whenever there's a new update in this channel.

• this is completely optional and must be manually opted into; you will not receive any pings otherwise.

To opt in, simply navigate to id:customize and select the <@&1493230732552966334> role. Deselecting the same way will remove the role at any time.

• Just to be clear, there is no intent to change the way we make these announcements, we're just trying to make it a little more apparent for players who want to stay informed with things like development updates, hotfixes, tuning, early crafting reminders, and other special notices relevant to Warrior gameplay.

[severe birch]

New Parsing Poll on WarcraftLogs
WarcraftLogs has released a new poll asking players for their opinions on certain raid boss parses in Midnight Season 1!

• Personally, I voted yes across the board, but I highly recommend everyone ask questions, debate, and make their own considerations.
• The third question is probably the most contentious, as it has to do with the ability for some classes to burst P1 adds, many of which die in suboptimal locations purely due to pad, while Phase 2 and 3 boss damage is far more relevant to finishing the fight.

Be sure to vote on the home page before the poll ends (no date given, but usually Fridays). <@&1493230732552966334>

[severe birch]

Patch 12.0.5. Official Patch Notes
Blizzard has released official patch notes for Patch 12.0.5, launching next week. If you've kept up with previous updates in this channel, there are no new changes, but they're all now collected in one spot. <@&1493230732552966334>

• Rend radius increased to 10 yards (was 8 yards).
• Wrecking Throw will now be highlighted when the Warrior targets a unit with an active Absorb shield.
• Shattering Throw will now be highlighted when the Warrior targets a unit with an active Immunity effect, or a Mage’s Ice Wall.
  Arms
• Mortal Wounds now triggers from Mortal Strike and Slam (was Mortal Strike and Cleave).
• Crushing Combo removes the cooldown from your next 2 uses of Cleave (was 3).
• Practiced Strikes now increases Mortal Strike and Slam damage by 15% and Cleave and Whirlwind damage by 15%.
• Demolish’s area of effect strike radius increased to 10 yards (was 8 yards).
• Dominance of the Colossus reduces the cooldown of Demolish by 5 seconds when you would gain a stack of Colossal Might and are already at max stacks (was 2 seconds).
• Reap the Storm has been updated – When Cleave hits 3 or more targets you have a 20% chance to unleash a flurry of steel, striking all nearby enemies for high Physical damage and applying Overwhelmed.
• Unrelenting Onslaught now also increases damage dealt by Bladestorm by 20%.
  Fury
• Hack and Slash has been redesigned – Rampage has 100% chance to refund a charge of Raging Blow.
• Improved Whirlwind now causes Whirlwind to apply Rend to all targets if Rend is known.
• Storm Surge causes Avatar to increase the damage of Thunder Clap by 10% (was 50%) and reduce its cooldown by 25% (was 50%).
  This is an old note, which I can confirm has been reverted.
• Reap the Storm has been updated – When Rampage hits 3 or more targets via Improved Whirlwind you have a 20% chance to unleash a flurry of steel, striking all nearby enemies for high Physical damage and applying Overwhelmed.
• Unrelenting Onslaught now increases damage dealt by Bladestorm by 20%.
  Protection
• Practiced Strikes now increases Shield Slam damage by 15% and Revenge and Thunder Clap damage by 15%.
• Demolish’s area of effect strike radius increased to 10 yards (was 8 yards).
• Dominance of the Colossus reduces the cooldown of Demolish by 5 seconds when you would gain a stack of Colossal Might and are already at max stacks (was 2 seconds).

[severe birch]

Impact of 12.0.5 Tuning Tomorrow
There've been a lot of questions, so here's a quick overview of what changes tomorrow with Patch 12.0.5. Refer to the [consolidated list above](#updates-midnight message) for specific spell changes. <@&1493230732552966334>

Arms
Colossus is getting big priority damage buffs and becoming easier to play in Mythic+, while Slayer gains a small increase in raid performance. Although Slayer still has a single target advantage and is more than fine for weekly keys, its multitarget is becoming less sustained and more consolidated into Bladestorm.

• Colossus loses ~2% sustained multitarget and gains ~8% single target damage, with no talent changes, though it will use Demolish more consistently and prioritize Slam against single targets for more bleed damage and better rage efficiency than juggling Ravager/Cleave/non-SD Execute.
• Slayer loses ~7% sustained multitarget and gains ~2% single target, taking Opportunist and focusing Overpower > Mortal Strike in Mythic+, though there are no talent or gameplay changes in raid.

Fury
Thane remains best for Mythic+ and most raid bosses featuring adds. Though Slayer still has more RNG, the gap between it and Thane is now smaller, and can be eliminated almost entirely by making effective use of Rampaging Ruin, but doing so requires a very specific pull cadence in the right dungeons that probably isn't worth it for most players.

• Once again, the Storm Surge change was reverted for [both Fury and Protection](#updates-midnight message), resulting in no change whatsoever for Mountain Thane.
• Slayer gains ~5% multitarget but loses ~2% single target because reasons. Most importantly, Rend no longer needs to be cast manually when using Improved Whirlwind, though Reap now triggering off Rampage doesn't result in any significant gameplay changes, since you're already prioritizing it pretty highly and still want to manage rage in order to minimize time spent spamming Whirlwind.

Protection

• No change for Thane, as previously mentioned.
• Colossus should now be very close to Thane in single target and even higher damage in multitarget, though Thane is probably still easier in practice.

[severe birch]

Using the Voidforge in Patch 12.0.5
Guides, sims, and everything else has already been updated for the patch, but here's a brief <@&1493230732552966334> for the new Voidforge system, which comes in two parts.

Nebulous Voidcores are bonus rolls that let you roll any raid boss or end-of-mythic+ dungeon to get a random piece of gear normally dropped from that activity at Great Vault level (e.g. a M+10 will be 1/6 Myth). You can also roll lesser activities like Prey, but you really shouldn't, since they will be lower ilevel.

• You will always be awarded an item, operating on knockout list, so that you will never bonus roll the same item twice. This allows you to target farm specific items over time by continually increasing the chances of getting the thing you want.
• You can purchase two Nebulous Voidcore bonus rolls from Decimus in the Voidstorm each week. Rolling a raid boss requires spending two, while rolling a dungeon only costs one, since it has a much larger loot table and therefore less chance of getting what you actually want.
• You can get a third Nebulous Voidcore each week from the Vault by spending 6 Tokens, the same way you buy a socket instead of taking an item normally.
• You can't kill the same M raid boss twice in the same week, so if you're trying to get a specific raid item, you probably just want to roll it each week. If you get down to just a couple specific items from different dungeons though, it may be worth stockpiling a couple weeks worth of cores, and then rolling the dungeon repeatedly back-to-back until you get the item... otherwise you run the risk of missing the item on your first few bonus rolls and then getting it from your vault anyway. Use your best judgement depending on how many items from how many different sources you need.
• There's no automatic tool to tell you what dungeon or boss to roll, but the Droptimizer's expected/best value should give you a pretty good idea. Keep in mind that some loot tables (like Chimaerus) can be manipulated by setting Protection loot spec instead of Arms/Fury.

Ascendant Voidcores are a separate upgrade system that increases the item level of weapons or trinkets that are 6/6 H, 6/6 M, or max crafted.

• 6/6 H and 6/6 M items each gain +9 ilevels, while max crafted get +10 instead.
• The specifics are not yet know, but it is heavily implied that this will be a multi-week quest and therefore extremely unlikely we'll be able to make any upgrades this week.

[severe birch]

Fervor of Battle is Bugged in Patch 12.0.5
Just a lil <@&1493230732552966334> PSA - Deep Wounds (Mortal Wounds) is not being applied when the automatic Slam/Heroic Strikes cast by Cleave crit.

[severe birch]

Warrior Hotfixes
Slayer single target was too strong <@&1493230732552966334>

• Slams from Fervor of Battle which critically strike will now correctly trigger Mortal Wounds.
• Deep Wounds applied by Execute no longer deal double the intended damage (for all three specializations).
  This change nerfs Fury single target by ~2% and Arms closer to -4%.

[severe birch]

Warrior Tuning
Increasing all three specializations on the next weekly reset, with the most power going into both Arms and Fury Slayer. <@&1493230732552966334>

Arms

• Execute damage increased by 20%.
• Overpower damage increased by 20%.
• Slayer: Slayer’s Strike damage increased by 40%.
• Slayer: Reap the Storm damage increased by 30%.

Fury

• All damage increased by 5%.
• Execute damage increased by 20%.
• Raging Blow damage increased by 20%.
• Slayer: Slayer’s Strike damage increased by 40%.
• Slayer: Reap the Storm damage increased by 30%.
• Mountain Thane: Ground Current damage increased by 50%.

Protection

• Execute damage increased by 20%.
• Mountain Thane: Thunder Blast damage increased by 30%.
• Mountain Thane: Ground Current damage increased by 50%.

Developers’ notes: These tuning changes are aimed at improving Warrior performance overall as well as compensating for damage lost due to the Deep Wounds bug fix last week. We will continue to monitor Warrior performance and make further adjustments as needed.

[severe birch]

Based on these numbers and with no other changes <@&1493230732552966334>

• In single target, Fury Slayer gains ~10% and Arms ~8%.
• In multitarget, Fury Slayer gains ~10% and Arms ~6%.
• Thane gains ~6% in both cases, while the impact on Colossus is pretty minimal.
  Keep in mind that both specs [just lost 2-4% from the Deep Wounds hotfix](#updates-midnight message) though, so this isn't quite as big as it looks. Overall, I'd still call these very good changes, even if Warriors aren't going to jump to the top of the meters.

In particular, this should put Fury Slayer's sustained multitarget very close to Thane (potentially even higher with effective use of Ruin), though Thane will remain more reliable due to consistent cooldown alignment. I doubt this will result in any significant build changes, but we'll evaluate more over the weekend.

[severe birch]

Warrior Hotfixes Missing
None of [this week's Warrior hotfixes](#updates-midnight message) went live, dunno why
We are investigating, so please stand by for future <@&1493230732552966334>

[severe birch]

Warrior Hotfixes Found
They were just a lil late to the party. <@&1493230732552966334>

[severe birch]

Hotfixes Verified, Sims and Guides Updated
Fury auto attack damage was actually increased by 8.3%, so Slayer and Thane both gained very slightly more single target than anticipated, but otherwise all changes have been verified and guides updated. <@&1493230732552966334>

• There are no talent changes for any spec that weren't already relevant in 12.0.5, though Slayer Arms can by run Massacre in Mythic+ to trade a small amount of multitarget for extra single target.
• No rotational changes for Thane unless you're talenting Wrath and Fury, which you never will.
• Arms Slayer just uses Mortal Strike with 2 EP in execute now in single target builds, or 2 EP & CS in AoE builds.
• Fury Slayer now prioritizes Execute above Bloodbath in single target, while multitarget prioritizes both Execute and Rampage over Bloodbath/Bloodthirst.
• Fury Slayer can take Improved Whirlwind and ignore Rend entirely for a 0.06% drop (which is effectively nothing), or keep Enraged Regen and use RB > Rend for a ~0.2% drop.
• No rotational changes for Arms Slayer or Colossus at this time.

See the #dps-faq guides for further detail, and remember the Before/After sims below are just for the sake of comparison and evaluating change, not an indication of actual performance that you're expected to reach on a given encounter.

[severe birch]

Upcoming Tank Tuning
Prot War, Blood DK, Vengeance DH, and Prot Pal are getting some defensive buffs with the weekly reset <@&1493230732552966334>

Protection

• Fight Through Flames reduces magic damage taken by 6% (was 4%).
• Phalanx reduces damage enemies deal to you by 8% (was 5%).
• Ignore Pain effectiveness increased by 8%.
  Developers’ notes: Protection melee damage mitigation is quite strong, but is a bit behind for magical attacks and damage-over-time effects. These changes are aimed at strengthening those areas as well as making it easier to maintain healthy Ignore Pain values.

[severe birch]

Having taken the time for additional practical testing and refinement, the recommended Arms Slayer Mythic+ build has been updated to a Massacre variant, focusing on increased single target to contrast with Colossus' greater multitarget capabilities. <@&1493230732552966334>

However, there's been a lot of debate between taking Javalineer to use Wrecking Throw as a ranged interrupt vs Stance Mastery for better Defensive Stance value. There are compelling arguments to both, but actual logs are inconclusive; even at the highest levels, both are typically used a single-digit number of times across entire keys, while lower levels are even more sporadic... so we've decided to do a little community data collection with a poll.

(be honest, I already know some of you are lying)

[severe birch]

Ascendant Voidcore Upgrades are Now Available
Completing the weekly quest (3 raid bosses, M+, delves, etc) will award one Ascendant Voidshard, of which you need five to upgrade a single weapon/trinket. Unfortunately, the rest appear to be very random drops from "powerful foes, so be prepared for a grind!
They'll be 100% drop chance starting tomorrow, so don't worry about it too much. <@&1493230732552966334>

T1 Ritual Sites appear to be the fastest farm, though shards can drop just about any endgame instanced or world activity.